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Professor Shuji Nakamura (director University of California, Santa Barbara’s Solid-State Lighting and Energy Center) has been named a recipient of the 2008 Prince of Asturias Award (Technical and Scientific Research category).

Picture: Professor Shuji Nakamura (director University of California, Santa Barbara’s Solid-State Lighting and Energy Center).

The Prince of Asturias Foundation awards the Technical and Scientific Research prize annually to “the individual, work group or institution whose discoveries or research represent a significant contribution to the progress of humanity in the fields of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, earth and space sciences, as well as their related technical aspects and technologies”.

Nakamura shares the award with carbon nanotube pioneer professor Sumio Iijima (of NEC and Meijo University, Japan), organometallic chemistry professor Tobin Marks (of Northwestern University), chemistry professor George Whitesides (of Harvard University) and drug delivery system and tissue engineering pioneer professor Robert Langer (of Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

Nakamura’s development of blue, green, and white LEDs and the blue laser diode also won the 2nd Millennium Technology Prize (the world’s biggest technology prize) in 2006 (the first winner, world-wide web developer Tim Berners-Lee, also shared the Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research in 2002.)

Recipients in each category share a €50,000 ($77,000) stipend, as well as each being presented with a medal and a Joan Miro sculpture (commissioned specifically for the awards, which began in 1981). The awards will be presented later this year in Oviedo by Crown Prince Felipe of Spain, the Prince of Asturias.

See related item:

Nakamura receives €1m Millennium Technology Prize; will donate money for LED lighting in developing countries

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