Who is the father of LED lights? Who first invented LED?

Nick Holonyak Jr. an American engineer, educator and father of LED lights has died. He died on Sept. 18 at age 93.

Holonyak is best known for his 1962 invention of a light-emitting diode (LED) that emitted visible red light instead of infrared light while working at General Electric’s research laboratory in Syracuse, New York.

Though he has received many awards, he didn’t receive the Nobel Prize and many colleagues have expressed their belief that he deserves the Nobel Prize for his invention of the red LED.

On that, Holonyak said;

“It’s ridiculous to think that somebody owes you something. We’re lucky to be alive, when it comes down to it.”

However, in October 2014, after the inventors of the blue LED were awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics, instead of his fellow LED researchers, Holonyak reversed his stance by stating “I find this one insulting.”

In 2021, Holonyak was awarded the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering “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 Russel D. Dupuis, and Isamu Akasaki and Shuji Nakamura, inventors of the Blue LED.