Isamu Akasaki

Hello, my name is Isamu Akasaki, and I am a scientist who loved solving puzzles. I was born in Japan on January 30th, 1929. When I was a little boy, I was very curious about the world around me. At night, I would look up at the sky and see all the bright, twinkling stars. They were so beautiful! I used to wonder if people could ever create tiny, colorful lights just like them. That curiosity stayed with me as I grew up and became a scientist. I wanted to find a way to make new kinds of light for everyone to use, and I knew it would be an exciting adventure to try.

When I became a scientist, there was a very tricky puzzle that no one could solve. We already had little red lights and green lights, but we were missing a bright blue one. This was a big problem because you need red, green, and blue light to mix together to make a bright, clean white light, like the sunshine. For a long time, many scientists believed that making a bright blue light was impossible. They had tried for many years and had given up. But I didn't want to give up. Around the year 1973, I decided that I would try to solve this puzzle. I knew it would be very hard work, but I was determined to find the answer.

I gathered a team to help me, including a very smart student named Hiroshi Amano. Together, we worked for many, many years in our laboratory. We tried different ideas and did thousands of experiments. Sometimes our experiments didn't work, but we never stopped trying. We knew that if we kept working hard, we might find the answer. Then, one very special day in 1989, it happened! We were looking at our experiment when suddenly, we saw a tiny, bright blue light begin to glow. We were so excited! We had finally done it. Our invention was called a blue LED, and it meant we had solved the impossible puzzle.

That little blue light changed the world. Today, blue LEDs are used everywhere to make bright, white light that saves a lot of energy. You can find them in your television screens, in the lightbulbs in your house, and even on your phone. In 2014, I was very proud to receive a special award called the Nobel Prize for our work. I lived to be 92 years old, and I was so happy to see how our invention helped so many people around the world. My story shows that if you stay curious and work very hard, you can solve even the most 'impossible' puzzles.