National Geographic: The 2014 Nobel Prize in physics went Tuesday to three scientists who gave lighting a makeover by inventing blue LED lights. The award recognizes a seemingly commonplace innovation, but one that has paved the way for a sea change in lighting efficiency that is under way around the world.
Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano, and Shuji Nakamura developed the blue light-emitting diode (LED) in Japan in the early 1990s, triggering a "fundamental transformation of lighting technology," according to a press...