In the history of physics, Shuji Nakamura occupies the ground between patient observation and the larger claims it makes possible.
Shuji Nakamura was born at Ikata in 1954. His recorded nationality is United States. He was educated at Nagoya University and Q11493625.
Twentieth-century science was collaborative, expensive and political: the questions were pursued by teams, and the answers had consequences that reached well past the laboratory.
His working life was spent at Ehime University, Nichia and University of California, Santa Barbara, where the work centred on physics.
His principal work is blue light-emitting diode. Physics advances when somebody insists on measuring what everyone else has been content to assume.
That the work was done from United States matters to the story. Science has never been evenly distributed, and where a person is based has always shaped which problems are reachable and whose results get read.
Recognition followed: Nobel Prize in Physics (2014) and Benjamin Franklin Medal (2002).
What that record amounts to is a body of physics that later workers could build on without re-checking. That is the practical test of a scientific life, and it is a harder one than fame.
Shuji Nakamura is still working, and the final assessment of his contribution has not been made - the ordinary condition of a living scientist.
Achievements
- Nobel Prize in Physics — 2014
- Benjamin Franklin Medal — 2002
- Notable work: blue light-emitting diode
- Held posts at Ehime University, Nichia and University of California, Santa Barbara
- Educated at Nagoya University, Q11493625 and University of Tokushima
- Fields of research: physics
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