Nick Holonyak Jr. ( ; November 3, 1928September 18, 2022) was an American engineer and educator. He is noted particularly for his 1962 invention and first demonstration of a semiconductor

laser diode file:Laser diode chip.jpg, The laser diode chip removed and placed on the eye of a needle for scale A laser diode (LD, also injection laser diode or ILD or semiconductor laser or diode laser) is a semiconductor device similar to a light-emittin ...

that emitted visible light. This device was the forerunner of the first generation of commercial

light-emitting diode A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor device that emits light when current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy in the form of photons. The color of the light (corre ...

s (LEDs). He was then working at a

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) was an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in 1892, incorporated in the New York (state), state of New York and headquartered in Boston. Over the year ...

research laboratory near

Syracuse, New York Syracuse ( ) is a City (New York), city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, United States. With a population of 148,620 and a Syracuse metropolitan area, metropolitan area of 662,057, it is the fifth-most populated city and 13 ...

. He left General Electric in 1963 and returned to his alma mater, the

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United States. Established in 1867, it is the f ...

, where he later became John Bardeen Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics.

Early life and career

Nick Holonyak Jr. was born in

Zeigler, Illinois Zeigler is a city in Franklin County, Illinois, United States. The population was 1,484 at the 2020 census. History In 1905, fifty men were killed in a coal mining accident in or near the town. Zeigler incorporated in 1914 and was named for L ...

, on November 3, 1928. His parents were Rusyn immigrants. His father worked in a

coal mine Coal mining is the process of resource extraction, extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its Energy value of coal, energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to Electricity generation, generate electr ...

. Holonyak was the first member of his family to receive any type of formal schooling. He once worked 30 straight hours on the

Illinois Central Railroad The Illinois Central Railroad , sometimes called the Main Line of Mid-America, is a railroad in the Central United States. Its primary routes connected Chicago, Illinois, with New Orleans, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mobile, Alabama, and thus, ...

before realizing that a life of hard labor was not what he wanted and he would prefer to go to school instead. According to a ''

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is an American daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1847, it was formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper", a slogan from which its once integrated WGN (AM), WGN radio and ...

'' article in 2003, "The cheap and reliable semiconductor lasers critical to DVD players, bar code readers and scores of other devices owe their existence in some small way to the demanding workload thrust upon Downstate railroad crews decades ago." Holonyak earned his bachelor's (1950), master's (1951), and doctoral (1954) degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Holonyak was

John Bardeen John Bardeen (; May 23, 1908 – January 30, 1991) was an American solid-state physicist. He is the only person to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics twice: first in 1956 with William Shockley and Walter Houser Brattain for their inventio ...

's first doctoral student there. In 1954, Holonyak went to

Bell Telephone Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...

, where he worked on silicon-based electronic devices. From 1955 to 1957 he served with the U.S. Army Signal Corps. From 1957 to 1963 he was a scientist at the General Electric Company's Advanced Semiconductor Laboratory near

. Here he invented, fabricated, and demonstrated the first visible light

on October 9, 1962. He grew crystals of the alloy GaAs_0.60P_0.40; a GaAs laser diode that worked in the infrared had recently been demonstrated by his General Electric colleague Robert N. Hall. The GaAs_0.60P_0.40 laser diode worked at low temperatures, but the device still functioned as a light-emitting diode at room temperature. The demonstration of red light emission from the diode inspired the article "Light of Hope – or Terror" in ''

Reader's Digest ''Reader's Digest'' is an American general-interest family magazine, published ten times a year. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, it is now headquartered in midtown Manhattan. The magazine was founded in 1922 by DeWitt Wallace and his wi ...

''. GaAsP was the material used for the first generation of commercial LEDs that came to market a few years later.

University of Illinois

In 1963, Holonyak became a professor at the University of Illinois. In 1993, he was named the

Endowed Chair Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He investigated methods for manufacturing

quantum dot laser A quantum dot laser is a semiconductor laser that uses quantum dots as the active laser medium in its light emitting region. Due to the tight confinement of charge carriers in quantum dots, they exhibit an electronic structure similar to atoms. Las ...

s. He and Dr.

Milton Feng Milton Feng co-created the first transistor laser, working with Nick Holonyak in 2004. The paper discussing their work was voted in 2006 as one of the five most important papers published by the American Institute of Physics since its founding 75 y ...

ran a transistor laser research center at the university funded by $6.5 million from the

United States Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD, or DOD) is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government charged with coordinating and superv ...

through

DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adva ...

. Holonyak retired in 2013. Ten of his 60 former doctoral students have developed new uses for LED technology at Philips Lumileds Lighting Company in

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...

Inventions

In addition to introducing the III-V alloy LED, Holonyak held 41

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

s. His other inventions include the red-light

semiconductor A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities (" doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping level ...

laser, usually called the

(used in CD and

DVD player A DVD player is a machine that plays DVDs produced under both the DVD-Video and DVD-Audio technical standards, two different and incompatible standards. Some DVD players will also play audio CDs. DVD players are connected to a television to ...

s and

cell phone A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones ( landline phones). This radio ...

s) and the shorted emitter p-n-p-n switch (used in light dimmers and power tools). In 2006, the

American Institute of Physics The American Institute of Physics (AIP) promotes science and the profession of physics, publishes physics journals, and produces publications for scientific and engineering societies. The AIP is made up of various member societies. Its corpora ...

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 ''Applied Physics Letters'' is a weekly peer-reviewed scientific journal that is published by the American Institute of Physics. Its focus is rapid publication and dissemination of new experimental and theoretical papers regarding applications of ...

'', were co-authored by Holonyak. The first one, co-authored with S. F. Bevacqua in 1962, announced the creation of the first visible-light laser diode. The second, co-authored primarily with

in 2005, announced the creation of a transistor laser that can operate at

room temperature Room temperature, colloquially, denotes the range of air temperatures most people find comfortable indoors while dressed in typical clothing. Comfortable temperatures can be extended beyond this range depending on humidity, air circulation, and ...

s. Holonyak predicted that his LEDs would replace the

incandescent light bulb An incandescent light bulb, also known as an incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe, is an electric light that produces illumination by Joule heating a #Filament, filament until it incandescence, glows. The filament is enclosed in a ...

Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February11, 1847October18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventions, ...

in the February 1963 issue of ''

'', and as LEDs improve in quality and efficiency they are gradually replacing incandescents as the bulb of choice.

Awards and honors

Holonyak was presented awards by

George H. W. Bush George Herbert Walker BushBefore the outcome of the 2000 United States presidential election, he was usually referred to simply as "George Bush" but became more commonly known as "George H. W. Bush", "Bush Senior," "Bush 41," and even "Bush th ...

George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician and businessman who was the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Bush family and the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he i ...

, Emperor

Akihito Akihito (born 23 December 1933) is a member of the Imperial House of Japan who reigned as the 125th emperor of Japan from 1989 until 2019 Japanese imperial transition, his abdication in 2019. The era of his rule was named the Heisei era, Hei ...

of Japan, and

Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has served as President of Russia since 2012, having previously served from 2000 to 2008. Putin also served as Prime Minister of Ru ...

. He also received the Global Energy International Prize, the

National Medal of Technology The National Medal of Technology and Innovation (formerly the National Medal of Technology) is an honor granted by the president of the United States to American inventors and innovators who have made significant contributions to the development ...

, the Order of

Lincoln Lincoln most commonly refers to: * Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), the 16th president of the United States * Lincoln, England, cathedral city and county town of Lincolnshire, England * Lincoln, Nebraska, the capital of Nebraska, U.S. * Lincoln (na ...

Medallion, and the 2004

Lemelson–MIT Prize The Lemelson–MIT Program awards several prizes yearly to inventors in the United States. The largest is the Lemelson–MIT Prize which was endowed in 1994 by Jerome H. Lemelson, funded by the Lemelson Foundation, and is administered through the ...

, also worth $500,000. Many colleagues expressed their belief that he deserved the Nobel Prize for his invention of the GaAsP laser and LED. On this subject, Holonyak said, "It's ridiculous to think that somebody owes you something. We're lucky to be alive, when it comes down to it." In October 2014, Holonyak reversed his stance by stating "I find this one insulting" in reaction to news that the inventors of the blue LED were awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics, instead of his fellow LED researchers. * 1973: Elected a member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...

for contributions to development of semiconductor controlled rectifiers, light emitting diodes and diode lasers''Nick Holonyak'' was elected in 1973
as a member of

in Electronics, Communication & Information Systems Engineering and Materials Engineering for contributions to development of semiconductor controlled rectifiers,

light emitting diodes A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor device that Light#Light sources, emits light when Electric current, current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy in the form of pho ...

and

diode laser The laser diode chip removed and placed on the eye of a needle for scale A laser diode (LD, also injection laser diode or ILD or semiconductor laser or diode laser) is a semiconductor device similar to a light-emitting diode in which a diode p ...

. * 1984: Elected to the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

* 1989:

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE ...

Edison Medal The IEEE Edison Medal is presented by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) "for a career of meritorious achievement in electrical science, electrical engineering, or the electrical arts." It is the oldest medal in this fi ...

for "an outstanding career in the field of electrical engineering with contributions to major advances in the field of semiconductor materials and devices". Holonyak's former student,

Russell Dupuis Russell Dean Dupuis (born 9 July 1947) is an American electrical engineer and physicist. He holds the Steve W. Chaddick Endowed Chair in Electro-Optics in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech. He has made pioneering ...

from the

Georgia Institute of Technology The Georgia Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Georgia Tech, GT, and simply Tech or the Institute) is a public university, public research university and Institute of technology (United States), institute of technology in Atlanta, ...

, won this same award in 2007. * 1992:

Charles Hard Townes Award The Charles Hard Townes Award of Optica (society), Optica is a prize for quantum electronics, including laser physics. Awarded annually since 1981, it is named after the Nobel Prize-winning laser pioneer Charles H. Townes.Optical Society of America Optica, founded as the Optical Society of America (later the Optical Society), is a professional society of individuals and companies with an interest in optics and photonics. It publishes journals, organizes conferences and exhibitions, and ca ...

* 1993:

NAS Award for the Industrial Application of Science The NAS Award for the Industrial Application of Science is awarded by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences "for original scientific work of intrinsic scientific importance and with significant, beneficial applications in industry." List of Recip ...

* 1995: $500,000

Japan Prize is awarded to individuals whose original and outstanding achievements in science and technology are recognized as having advanced the frontiers of knowledge and served the cause of peace and prosperity for mankind. As of 2024, the Japan Prize h ...

for "outstanding contributions to research and practical applications of light emitting diodes and lasers" * 2001:

Frederic Ives Medal The Frederic Ives Medal is the highest award of the Optical Society, recognizing overall distinction in optics. The prize was established in 1928 by Herbert E. Ives in honor of his father, Frederic Ives. Initially awarded every two years, it has be ...

of the

Optical Society of America Optica, founded as the Optical Society of America (later the Optical Society), is a professional society of individuals and companies with an interest in optics and photonics. It publishes journals, organizes conferences and exhibitions, and ca ...

* 2003:

IEEE Medal of Honor The IEEE Medal of Honor is the highest recognition of the American Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). It has been awarded since 1917, and is presented to an individual or team of up to three who have made exceptional contri ...

* 2005: Inducted as a Laureate of

The Lincoln Academy of Illinois The Lincoln Academy of Illinois is a not-for-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to recognizing contributions made by living Illinoisans. Named for Abraham Lincoln, the Academy administers the Order of Lincoln, the highest award given b ...

and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the State's highest honor) by the

Governor of Illinois The governor of Illinois is the head of government of Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its we ...

in the area of Science * June 2006: Two of Holonyak's papers were chosen by the editors of ''Applied Physics Letters'' as among the five most important published since the journal's founding in 1962. * November 9, 2007:

Historical marker A commemorative plaque, or simply plaque, or in other places referred to as a historical marker, historic marker, or historic plaque, is a plate of metal, ceramic, stone, wood, or other material, bearing text or an image in relief, or both, ...

installed on the University of Illinois campus recognizing his development of the quantum-well laser. It is located on the Bardeen Engineering Quadrangle near where the old Electrical Engineering Research Laboratory used to stand. * 2008: Inducted into the

National Inventors Hall of Fame The National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF) is an American not-for-profit organization, founded in 1973, which recognizes individual engineers and inventors who hold a US patent of significant technology. Besides the Hall of Fame, it also operate ...

(Announced February 14, 2008) (May 2–3, 2008 at Akron, Ohio) * 2015:

Charles Stark Draper Prize The U.S. National Academy of Engineering annually awards the Draper Prize, which is given for the advancement of engineering and the education of the public about engineering. It is one of three prizes that constitute the "Nobel Prizes of Enginee ...

for Engineering "for the invention, development, and commercialization of materials and processes for light-emitting diodes (LEDs)" * 2015: Elected OSA Honorary Member, "for his numerous technology innovations advancing solid state lighting, the Internet, high-performance computing, visible LEDs and quantum well diode lasers." * September 2018: Village of

Glen Carbon, Illinois Glen Carbon is a village in Madison County, Illinois, United States, northeast of St. Louis. It is part of the St. Louis metropolitan area. The population was 13,842 at the 2020 census. History In 1801, Colonel Samuel Judy received a milita ...

, placed an honorary street sign on behalf of Holonyak, a former resident * 2021:

Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering Queen most commonly refers to: * Queen regnant, a female monarch of a kingdom * Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king * Queen (band), a British rock band Queen or QUEEN may also refer to: Monarchy * Queen dowager, the widow of a king * ...

"for the creation and development of LED lighting, which forms the basis of all solid-state lighting technology". He shares the prize with his former students M. George Craford and Russell D. Dupuis, and

Isamu Akasaki was a Japanese engineer and physicist, specializing in the field of semiconductor technology and Nobel Prize laureate, best known for inventing the bright gallium nitride (GaN) p-n junction blue LED in 1989 and subsequently the high-brightness G ...

and

Shuji Nakamura is a Japanese electronic engineer, inventor of the blue LED, a major breakthrough in lighting technology, and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2014. Nakamura specializes in the field of semiconductor technology, and he is a professo ...

, inventors of the Blue LED.

Personal life

Holonyak and his wife, Katherine, were married for over 60 years. He died on September 18, 2022, in Urbana, Illinois, at the age of 93.

References

External links

Nick Holonyak Jr.
on the Engineering and Technology History Wiki
Nick Holonyak Jr. US National Medal of Technology
2002. {{DEFAULTSORT:Holonyak, Nick 1928 births 2022 deaths 20th-century American inventors 21st-century American inventors American people of Rusyn descent Draper Prize winners Electrical engineering academics Fellows of the American Physical Society Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences Grainger College of Engineering alumni IEEE Edison Medal recipients IEEE Medal of Honor recipients Laser researchers Lemelson–MIT Prize Light-emitting diode pioneers Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Military personnel from Illinois National Medal of Science laureates National Medal of Technology recipients American optical engineers People from Zeigler, Illinois Semiconductor physicists University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty Benjamin Franklin Medal (Franklin Institute) laureates Fellows of Optica (society)