Nick Holonyak

Early life and career

Nick Holonyak Jr. was born on November 3, 1928, in Zeigler, Illinois, to Rusyn immigrants. His father worked in a coal mine. 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 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 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. Holonyak was John Bardeen's first doctoral student there. In 1954, Holonyak went to Bell Telephone Laboratories, 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, Holonyak was a scientist at General Electric's Advanced Semiconductor Laboratory near Syracuse, New York. Here he invented, fabricated, and demonstrated the first visible light laser diode on October 9, 1962. He grew crystals of the alloy GaAs0.60P0.40; a GaAs laser diode that worked in the infrared had recently been demonstrated by his General Electric colleague Robert N. Hall. The GaAs0.60P0.40 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. GaAsP was the material used for the first generation of commercial LEDs that came to market a few years later.

In 1963, Holonyak became a professor at the University of Illinois. In 1993, he was named the John Bardeen Endowed Chair Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics. He investigated methods for manufacturing quantum dot lasers. He and Dr. Milton Feng ran a transistor laser research center at the university funded by $6.5 million from the United States Department of Defense through DARPA. Holonyak retired from Illinois in 2013.

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

Inventions

In addition to introducing the III-V alloy LED, Holonyak held 41 patents. His other inventions include the red-light semiconductor laser, usually called the laser diode (used in CD and DVD players and cell phones) and the shorted emitter p-n-p-n switch (used in light dimmers and power tools).

In 2006, the American Institute of Physics 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, 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.

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.

Recognition

Memberships

Awards

Many colleagues expressed their belief that Holonyak deserved the Nobel Prize for his invention of the GaAsP laser and LED. On this subject, he 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.

National awards

Commemoration

• 1997: The Optical Society of America (now Optica) created the Nick Holonyak, Jr. Award in his honor.
• 2005: Inducted as a Laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the State's highest honor) by the Governor of Illinois 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 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 (Announced February 14, 2008) (May 2–3, 2008 at Akron, Ohio).
• September 2018: Village of Glen Carbon, Illinois, placed an honorary street sign on behalf of Holonyak, a former resident.

Notes

References

References

1. "Physics Tree - Nick Holonyak".
2. Schubert, E. Fred. (2018). "Light-Emitting Diodes". Cambridge University Press.
3. (February 19, 2015). "Nick Holonyak".
4. "Nick Holonyak".
5. "Illinois Distributed Museum – Nick Holonyak, Jr.". IDM.
6. Von, Jon. (January 25, 2003). "Nice Guys Can Finish As Geniuses at University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign". Chicago Tribune.
7. (December 1, 1962). "Coherent (visible) Light Emission from Ga(As_1−xP_x) Junctions". Applied Physics Letters.
8. Manchester, Harland. (February 1963). "Light of Hope – or Terror". Reader's Digest.
9. "Nick Holonyak, Jr. – Biography". IEEE.
10. (May 4, 2012). "Nick Holonyak, Jr., six decades in pursuit of light". University of Illinois.
11. Wolinsky, Howard. (February 5, 2005). "U. of I.'s Holonyak out to take some of Edison's luster". Chicago Sun-Times.
12. Damery, Jonathan. (August 5, 2013). "Holonyak retires after 50 years in ECE". University of Illinois.
13. Grainger Engineering Office of Marketing and Communications. (December 22, 2018). "Illinois faculty, former students honor Nick Holonyak legacy in celebration of his birthday | Holonyak Micro & Nanotechnology Lab | UIUC". Mntl.illinois.edu.
14. (November 3, 1928). "Nick Holonyak | Lemelson". Lemelson.mit.edu.
15. (August 7, 2013). "LED inventor retires from U. of Illinois". Pjstar.com.
16. (May–June 2007). "After Glow". Illinois Alumni Magazine.
17. Port, Otis. (May 23, 2005). "Nick Holonyak: He Saw The Lights". Business Week.
18. Ahlberg Touchstone, Liz. (September 18, 2022). "Nick Holonyak Jr., pioneer of LED lighting, dies". University of Illinois News Bureau.
19. "Dr. Nick Holonyak".
20. "Nick Holonyak, Jr".
21. "Honorary Members".
22. "IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award Recipients". [[IEEE]].
23. "IEEE Andrew S. Grove Award Recipients". [[IEEE]].
24. "IEEE Edison Medal Recipients". [[IEEE]].
25. "Charles Hard Townes Medal".
26. "NAS Award for the Industrial Application of Science". [[National Academy of Sciences]].
27. "The 1995 Japan Prize".
28. "Frederic Ives Medal".
29. "Nick Holonyak, Jr". [[Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers]].
30. "Laureates".
31. "$500K Lemelson–MIT Prize Winners". [[MIT]].
32. (2015-01-07). "Pioneers Of Light-Emitting Diodes Honored With 2015 Charles Stark Draper Prize".
33. "LED Lighting".
34. (October 8, 2014). "LED Inventor Insulted, Feels Work Bypassed By Nobel".
35. "Nick Holonyak Jr".
36. "2002 Laureates- National Medal of Technology and Innovation". [[USPTO]].
37. "Nick Holonyak, Jr. Award".
38. "Laureates by Year". The Lincoln Academy of Illinois.
39. (June 5, 2006). "Illinois physicists produce two most important scientific papers". phys.org.
40. Communications, Grainger Engineering Office of Marketing and. "Holonyak historical marker unveiled".
41. "News {{!}} Engineering at Illinois {{!}} University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign".
42. Sommerhof, John. (July 9, 2018). "Glen Carbon names first honorary street designation". Thetelegraph.com.