LED Blues

We are nearly almost totally unaware of the technological marvels that surround us. But we should be in awe of them. They don’t magically fall unbidden from the skies like manna from heaven. Real people have to work really hard, often in obscurity, to bring those amazing things to life. Today I learned the details about the making of one such innovation: that of the blue LED.

I knew that the blue LED was a big deal and that the inventors got the 2019 Physics Nobel Prize. But I didn’t know of the struggles that one of them — Shuji Nakamura — went through to make it happen. Thanks to a Veritasium video, I have a new hero: Dr Nakamura. His innovation had transformed the world.Over at physicsworld.com, Margaret Harris began her September 2019 article with —

Of all the physics Nobel prizes awarded in the past 60 years, the one with the greatest impact on everyday life is undoubtedly the one shared by Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi  Amano and Shuji Nakamura in 2014. As the co-inventors of the blue light-emitting diode (LED), this Japanese-born trio set in motion a dramatic shift in how we see the world. You would have to go back to the 1956 prize – shared by transistor inventors John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley – to find a Nobel-laureated discovery that sparked an equivalent transformation.

All that is fine and good. What I wanted to point you to is Nakamura’s story. An amazing man you’d agree when you finish this video. As a bonus, the video is a good refresher on the physics of semi-conductors.

I almost forgot the title of this post: LED blues. So here are two songs, both of which I grew up with. First, Ringo Starr’s 1971 song “It don’t come easy”: Gotta pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues … (Bonus fact: The incomparable George Harrison is on the guitar.)

Next up, Neil Diamond’s song. “Song sung blue, everybody knows one, song sung blue, every garden grows one . . .”

Enjoy.