Millennium Technology Prize Awarded to LED Creator 64
mapkinase writes "This year's Millennium Technology Prize was awarded to Prof. Nakamura of Japan, for invention of white, blue and green light emitting diodes." From the article: "His other inventions such as blue LEDs are used in flat-screen displays, while blue lasers are already being exploited in the next generation of DVD player. 'Professor Nakamura's technological innovations in the field of semiconductor materials and devices are groundbreaking,' said Jaakko Ihamuotila, chairman of the Millennium Prize Foundation. The Millennium Technology Prize is the world's largest technology award, equivalent to the Nobel Prizes for science. It recognizes technological developments that have a positive impact on quality of life and sustainable development."
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"who cares where he is from" (Score:1)
By adding that little bit extra, all his family and all Japanese people full stop can feel proud.
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Do you work for Sony perchance?
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Nobel equivalent? I don't think so. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Nobel Prize is occasionally awarded to technologists, or inventions by scientists that were not new science but rather applications. Jack Kilby's Nobel is a perfect example. The Millenium Technology Prize does not carry anything like the history or even the sensibility of the Nobel. For example how is the invention of HTML such a big deal? Compared to the work of a technologist like Norman Borlaug it is laughable.
There isn't a Nobel for mathematics - one could make a pretty good case there should have been. But there is no 'equivalent' to the Nobel.
Fields can be considered "Nobel equivalent" (Score:1, Informative)
And yes and though not immediately
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My thesis advisor was awarded a shared Nobel at age 80 for a piece of work he did in his late 60's. Under the Fields rules he was
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Re:Nobel equivalent? I don't think so. (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_prize#Lack_of_
However, they don't appear to have captured the public or media's imagination, compared to the Nobel (or Fields)
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Thanks, you have neatly summed up the term "academic arrogance". I'm not going to argue that HTML is a particularly complex invention, but the impact of this simple idea is probably larger then the research of 95% of the Nobel prizes awarded in the last few decades. Oh no, TBL doesn't have a PhD, and sometimes worked in industry! Despite this, HTTP (even simpler than HTML, yet even more ubiquitous) and HTML evolved over years of his research and de
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Give any "inovation" award to the creation of the HTML show a lack of knowledge that should not exist on the academic field. Giving it a "commercial" award is ok, tho, so maybe it should be listed on PcMag or some other publication.
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All TBL deserves is a kick in the ass for butchering hypertext technology. At that time there was stuff like NoteCards (PARC) and several other projects - including Xanadu. By making the abomination that is WWW a success, TBL assured that all progress in hypertext would be near-impossible. Instead we now have a mess, entangled and ugly beyond belief. Just thinking of the fut
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Oh, a chip on one's shoulder, eh?
but the impact of this simple idea is probably larger then the research of 95% of the Nobel prizes awarded in the last few decades. Oh no, TBL doesn't have a PhD, and sometimes worked in industry!
There are a number of Nobel Laureates who have worked in industry, and don't have PhD's. Jack Kilby whom I gave as an example (disproving your academic arrogance theory BTW) is one such case. And yes, there are plenty o
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Yeah, that was a bit inflammatory... but...
What is more he did it in a way that helped insure its wide adoption. But it NOT a fundamental contribution at a level deserving of Nobel recognition, or a prize touted as being equivalent to a Nobel Prize.
That's funny, if you read Alfred Nobel's original grant and will, he was more concerned with ideas that "shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind". As I'm sure you know, it's not all physics and chemistry - scientist
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You're missing the point, by a long way. While it is true that HTML has been a critical part of something that has had a vast impact, HTML itself is nothing special. If it had not been invented then something else would have been used. Several vaguely similar things already existed at the time, any of which co
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The "idea" you're so excited about, is the idea of a markup language, and links, which existed LONG before HTML.
You might as well grant an award for the format of the Apache config file... It probably took years to reach it's current form, and has significant impact on the world...
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Honestly HTML (and moreover XML) annoys me. But it's damn popular, and it works. Of course markup languages have existed before HTML. TBL was in fact experimenting with markup languages 25 years ago. I'm sure someone else was thinking about it well before that. So what?
The format happens to be HTML, but HTML didn't enable the process, or the technology to do it... any more than the PNG image
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So it's not the revolutionary concept you claim. It's just a particular implementation that happened to become popular. He deserves credit for the accomplishment, but it's about as worthy of a major award as somebody who modified their car to get better gas mileage...
Gopher had most of the functionality of
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http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-01/irr i-cde012406.php [eurekalert.org]
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Fields medal comes with monetary award of C$15,000. It's not a "large price".
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Ponder upon that the next time you write a response to Slashdot.
Inventing LED gets name in flashing lights... (Score:2)
Still, this is a forum that gives the industry a way of acknowledging key contributions. What's wrong with that?
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Learning to think outside the box is a cultural attribute. It is time to think innovation, and the rest will follow
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Nakamura first to make led, BUT (Score:3, Interesting)
Linky [bu.edu]
I wish more people knew this. He's one of the best professors I've ever had and a hell of a nice guy.
A correction (Score:5, Informative)
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Good. (Score:2)
Good show.
Woah (Score:2)
I've read about this guy (Score:2, Interesting)
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My reasons of submitting (Score:2)
A Slight Imbalance (Score:1)
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Saw him lecture once (Score:5, Interesting)
Shuji gave a coloquia lecture there once, must have been 1998 or 1999. It was just amazing. Given that I was in the photonics department, everyone knew what a bright LED was supposed to look like. Shuji came in, told us about the science in a 'doh, it was so obvious now you tell me' kind of way, then he showed us the toys.
The LEDs he connected up to his little pen sized battery unit and shone into the audience. Blues, Greens, Violets[2], Whites etc. They were really bright.
Then he connected up the laser diodes. He shone those onto a piece of white card he held[3] and F**k me but they were bright.
[1] The bit to the north of England.
[2] The kind of colour you can't really focus on, really weird, hard to describe.
[3] We only have mortal retinas after all.
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Off topic, I know, but it might be interesting...
[2] The kind of colour you can't really focus on, really weird, hard to describe.
I'd imagine after that sentence that you wear contact lenses. It took me forever to realise this, because I always thought it was everyone, but one day I had a problem with one of my lenses, took it out, and suddenly I could focus just fine on one of those violet displays. Turns out, my contect lenses (like many others) have UV filters in them, and so anything thet lets out
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Nope. My eyesight is pretty good. Better than 20/20 last time it was tested (which was after my PhD).
I could be completely wrong but I think the effect is because we don't have many blue cones in our retinas so we can't easily spacially resolve points of blue light, hence blue LEDs look a little fuzzy but other colours look like points. Blue light is detected a little by the green cones so we don't have too much of a problem with blue itself,
Death to blue LEDs!!!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Why do I want my indicator lights to illuminate the whole damn room? They are extremely uncomfortable to look at, and too bright for purpose they are used for. I want an indicator light to discreetly notify me of the status of my equipment. Not blind me. Is t
mod parent up! (Score:2)
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So, then why do manufacturers of cheap equipment put them all over the place? Even I can buy them for a few cents each if I buy direct from Asia. I agree that the blue LED has other worthwhile uses, but the misuse of them outweighs any good purposes they might be used for. At the moment, 95% of blue LEDs seem to be used to annoy users.
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Thank you, Professor :) (Score:2)