Shuji Nakamura (中村 修二) received the Nobel Prize, along with Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano, for inventing the blue LED, a seemingly impossible task that only his determination allowed him to achieve—a determination to work on the project, often against the wishes of the company he worked for. The blue LED then made it possible to obtain white light and thus LED lighting, which, compared to traditional lighting, has saved enormous amounts of carbon dioxide emissions thanks to the LED’s efficiency in generating light compared to the tungsten bulb, which mostly generates heat. Nakamura later left Japan for the United States, where he became a professor of materials science at the College of Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). In 2015, his contributions to the commercialization and development of energy-efficient white LED lighting technology were recognized by the Global Energy Prize. In 2021, Nakamura, along with Akasaki, Nick Holonyak, M. George Craford, and Russell D. Dupuis, received the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering “for the creation and development of LED lighting, which forms the basis of all solid-state lighting technology.” In 2001, Nakamura sued his former employer, Nichia, for his unrecognized discovery bonus. Nakamura claimed he received only 20,000 yen (about $180) for his discovery of “Patent 404” (for the blue LED). Nakamura sued for 2 billion yen (<20 million dollars) as his just fee for the invention, and the district court awarded him ten times that amount, 20 billion yen (<200 million dollars). However, Nichia appealed the award, and the parties settled in 2005 for 840 million yen (~$8.1 million, less than 5% of the award amount), which was still the largest payment ever made by a Japanese company to an employee for an invention. It would, however, prove to be barely enough to cover Nakamura's legal fees.
