Who are you looking for?

Install Famoose

Keep Famoose on your home screen or desktop for easy access.

Open this site in Chrome or Edge and look for Install app in the browser menu or address bar. If no install option appears, you can bookmark Famoose instead.

Famoose.co
Appearance
Text size
Page width
Colour
Discover›Technology
Contents
Nick Holonyak
Engineer

Nick Holonyak

Famoose for

Developing a semiconductor device that emitted visible red light.

Visible-light diode · Semiconductor lasers

Born
3 November 1928
Birthplace
Zeigler, Illinois
Died
18 September 2022

More people

Ada LovelaceRecognising what a programmable machine could do beyond arithmetic.Alan TuringHelping break Enigma and laying foundations for computer science.Grace HopperHelping make computer programming readable in English-like language.

Nick Holonyak

American electrical engineer whose 1962 work helped establish practical visible-light LEDs. He later taught and researched at the University of Illinois.

Early life

Engineering education

Grew up in an Illinois mining family. Studied electrical engineering at Illinois and became John Bardeen’s first doctoral student there.

Career

  1. 1954

    Bell Labs

    Began work on semiconductor devices.

  2. 1957

    General Electric

    Joined its semiconductor laboratory.

  3. 1963

    Illinois faculty

    Returned to his university as a professor.

Contributions

Visible-light diode

Demonstrated a red-emitting semiconductor laser diode that also operated as an LED.

Semiconductor lasers

Investigated new device structures with colleagues and students.

Beyond work

Family

Was married to Katherine for more than sixty years.

Sources & photo creditBiography and career ↗Biographical references ↗Additional biographical or achievement source ↗Additional biographical or achievement source ↗

Original photograph. Cropped and displayed in monochrome.

Photo: AnonymousUnknown author. Public domain · Original image. Cropped and displayed in monochrome.