Who invented the Blue LED?

Shuji Nakamura (born May 22, 1954) is a Japanese-born American electronic engineer and inventor specializing in the field of semiconductor technology, professor at the Materials Department of the College of Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara and is regarded as the inventor of the blue LED, a major breakthrough in lighting technology. Together with Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano, he is one of the three recipients of the 2014 Nobel Prize for Physics "for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes, which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources".

Although red and green LEDs had been around for many years, blue LEDs were a long-standing challenge for scientists in both academia and industry. However, today, blue LEDs are found in people's pockets around the world, inside the lights and screens of smartphones.