Illustration of the Japanese electrical engineer Akasaki Isamu (1929-2021). Isamu is best known for his work using semiconductor materials to produce blue LEDs (light emitting diodes). He used gallium nitride (GaN) crystals to create the blue LEDs that are needed to produce energy-efficient white light LEDs. Isamu and his colleague Hiroshi Amano were awarded a share of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention of blue LEDs, along with Shuji Nakamura who independently made the same discovery.