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Nick Holonyak
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nick Holonyak Jr. was born in Zeigler, Illinois on November 3, 1928. Holonyak was John Bardeen's first PhD student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and later created the first visible semiconductor lasers in 1960 and the first visible light-emitting diode in 1962 while working as a consulting scientist at a General Electric Company laboratory in Syracuse, New York. In 1963 he joined John Bardeen at the University of Illinois and worked on quantum wells and quantum-well lasers.
In 1989 Holonyak received the IEEE Edison Medal for 'an outstanding career in the field of electrical engineering with contributions to major advances in the field of semiconductor materials and devices.' In 1995 he was awarded the Japan Prize for 'Outstanding contributions to research and practical applications of light emitting diodes and lasers.' In 2003 he was awarded the IEEE Medal of Honor. In 2006, the American Institute of Physics decided on the five most important papers in each of its journals since it was founded 75 years ago. Two of these five papers in the journal Applied Physics Letters were co-authored by Holonyak. The first one, coauthored with S. F. Bevacqua in 1962, announced the creation of the first visible-light LED. The second, co-authored primarily with Milton Feng in 2005, announced the creation of a transistor laser that can operate at room temperatures.
As of 2005, he is the John Bardeen Endowed Chair Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is investigating methods for manufacturing quantum dot lasers.