Nick Holonyak, inventor of the visible red LED, Is dead. He was a student of John Bardeen.
My then roommate was one of his research assistants at the University of Illinois - Urbana.https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/30/science/nick-holonyak-jr-dead.html
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Nick did his initial research at GE, where he was told the red LED would never work.
Of course GE wanted incandescent and fluorescent lighting, and their high power requirements,
to remain their cash cows far into the future. And to keep their nuclear power plants running full tilt.
Of course GE wanted incandescent and fluorescent lighting, and their high power requirements,
to remain their cash cows far into the future. And to keep their nuclear power plants running full tilt.
Member
Joined 2006
It all started with the frenzy race of fabricating the world's first laser that's made with semiconductor after T. Maiman demonstrated the laser action with ruby in 1960.
While everyone was shooting at the easy target material Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) to experiment with since GaAs was already found to emit infrared light via electrical pumping in 1961 by Biard and Pittman (yes, that's the first LED), Prof. Holonyak otoh chose to work on his own inventive GaAsP system which he envisioned to be able to produce visible red light. (And it finally worked but no one knew exactly how and why then, and it took more than a decade to gain better understanding of its physics. My research manager at IBM was a student in the same Department in the mid 70s and has a few joint publications with Holonyak; and he has told me some of the candid stories)
By Septmeber 1962, GE, IBM and MIT published their independent and succesful experimental results almost simultaneously on their infrared GaAs laser, and Prof. Holonyak was beaten within a month in publication on his visible red laser and the by-product red LED, but the rest is history as they say: his is the most important discovery of them all.
Incidentally, Marshall Nathan was the leader in the IBM team at that time. After 60 long years, in 2022 he has just received the Nick Holonyak Jr. Award. Joseph A. Bradley was the person in his team whom did the cleaving and measurements of one of the first semiconductor lasers, and 30 years later he did it again with his midas touch on my GaAs:N laser and retired thereafter. I miss him.
Prof. Holonyak's along with his advisor John Bardeen's scientific contribution to the mankind will always be remembered.
😊😇
Attachment: Stories about that period of chasing the first semiconductor laser & LED dreams.
While everyone was shooting at the easy target material Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) to experiment with since GaAs was already found to emit infrared light via electrical pumping in 1961 by Biard and Pittman (yes, that's the first LED), Prof. Holonyak otoh chose to work on his own inventive GaAsP system which he envisioned to be able to produce visible red light. (And it finally worked but no one knew exactly how and why then, and it took more than a decade to gain better understanding of its physics. My research manager at IBM was a student in the same Department in the mid 70s and has a few joint publications with Holonyak; and he has told me some of the candid stories)
By Septmeber 1962, GE, IBM and MIT published their independent and succesful experimental results almost simultaneously on their infrared GaAs laser, and Prof. Holonyak was beaten within a month in publication on his visible red laser and the by-product red LED, but the rest is history as they say: his is the most important discovery of them all.
Incidentally, Marshall Nathan was the leader in the IBM team at that time. After 60 long years, in 2022 he has just received the Nick Holonyak Jr. Award. Joseph A. Bradley was the person in his team whom did the cleaving and measurements of one of the first semiconductor lasers, and 30 years later he did it again with his midas touch on my GaAs:N laser and retired thereafter. I miss him.
Prof. Holonyak's along with his advisor John Bardeen's scientific contribution to the mankind will always be remembered.
😊😇
Attachment: Stories about that period of chasing the first semiconductor laser & LED dreams.