The American Physical Society congratulates the 2014 Nobel Prize Winners in Physics and Chemistry.
The physics laureates Isamu Akasaki (Meijo University and Nagoya University), Hiroshi Amano (Nagoya University), and Shuji Nakamura (University of California, Santa Barbara) have been recognized for their work that led to the invention of the blue light-emitting diode, a fundamental stepping stone towards the realization of new environmentally friendly and energy efficient light sources.
The chemistry laureates Eric Bertzig (Howard Hughes Medical Institute), Stefan W. Hell (Max Planck Institute and German Cancer Research Center), and William E. Moerner (Stanford Univerisity) have been recognized for their work in improving the resolution of optical microscopy, in particular the development of a super-resolved fluorescence microscope.
“It’s a great year for optics,” said Pierre Meystre (University of Arizona Regents’ Professor of Physics and Optical Sciences, Physical Review Letters Lead Editor), “with blue LEDs winning the Physics Nobel yesterday and fluorescence microscopy winning the Chemistry prize today. It shows that wonderful things are happening in optics from saving enormous amounts of energy with efficient lighting to helping with life-saving medical advances that rely on super-resolution imaging. They are completely different technologies, but both light-based, and next year is the International Year of Light, so the timing couldn’t be better.”
Many remarkable papers from these scientists contributed to this development. These include Moerner’s seminal 1989 work on optical detection and spectroscopy of single molecules in a solid, which was published in Physical Review Letters. This paper is now freely available on our website.