Shuji Nakamura is a Japanese-American engineer and Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2014 for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs). This invention revolutionised lighting worldwide.
Before Nakamura's breakthrough in the early 1990s, LEDs could only produce red and green light, limiting their applications. The addition of blue LEDs enabled the creation of white LED lighting — the energy-efficient technology that has now replaced incandescent and fluorescent bulbs around the world, saving enormous amounts of energy.
His Nobel Prize citation noted that blue LEDs have enabled bright, energy-saving white light sources that are now contributing to greater quality of life for people around the world. It is estimated that LED lighting saves hundreds of billions of dollars in energy costs annually and dramatically reduces carbon emissions.