Illustration of the Japanese electrical engineer Hiroshi Amano (born 1960). Amano received his bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees from Nagoya University, Japan, where as an undergraduate he joined the research group of Akasaki Isamu. The group were working on using semiconductor materials to produce blue LEDs (light emitting diodes). Their use of gallium nitride (GaN) crystals was successful, creating the blue LEDs that are needed to produce energy-efficient white light LEDs. Isamu and 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.