LED for the win: Nobel Physics Prize go to Japanese inventors

A trio of Japanese scientists won the 2014 Nobel Prize for Physics for inventing the power-saving LED light.

Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano of Japan and Japanese-born US citizen Shuji Nakamura won the prize for developing the blue light-emitting diode (LED) – the missing piece that now allows manufacturers to produce white-light lamps. The arrival of such lamps is changing the way homes and workplaces are lit, offering a longer-lasting and more efficient alternative to the incandescent bulbs pioneered by Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison at the end of the 19th century.