Description

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To celebrate the awarding of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics to Shuji Nakamura (along with two other Japanese scientists), this newly updated edition profiles the gifted Japanese engineer who is largely responsible for the coming revolution in lighting technology. Veteran technology writer Bob Johnstone not only was the first Western journalist to meet and interview Nakamura, but also received the brilliant engineer’s full cooperation in providing a series of exclusive interviews for this book. 

This updated edition contains a new preface and an afterword that summarizes Nakamura’s most recent accomplishments, including the story of Soraa, a lighting company cofounded by Nakamura and two colleagues. Using an improved crystal growth technology pioneered by Nakamura, Soraa debuted new “second-generation” LEDs that are much smaller and more energy-efficient, produce better color, and have the potential to replace halogen lamps. In learning about this Nobel Prize–winning innovator, readers will better understand the new lighting revolution and its profound impact on the world. 

About the Author

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Bob Johnstone is the author of Switching to Solar: What We Can Learn from Germany’s Success in Harnessing Clean Energy; Never Mind the Laptops: Kids, Computers, and the Transformation of Learning; We Were Burning: Japanese Entrepreneurs and the Forging of the Electronic Age; and other works. He has also contributed numerous articles on technology to Forbes, Nature, New Scientist, MIT Technology Review, Wired, and the Far Eastern Economic Review.

Praise For…

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“[A] compelling account of Nakamura’s story, packed with salutary lessons for would-be Edisons.”

—Financial Times
 

“[Nakamura] is clearly a great subject for an engaging book, and author Bob Johnstone does not disappoint…he weaves a lucid, captivating narrative around Nakamura's struggles to achieve his luminous dream…Johnstone offers readers much more than a Nakamura biography, for this is also an insightful first look at several key players in a solid-state lighting industry that is already grossing more than $4 billion annually…Brilliant! is a superb introduction to this dramatic story of high technology in action, which continues to this day.”

—IEEE Spectrum magazine

 
“The longtime technology reporter…has a passion for uncovering the mysteries of abstruse material science that is unmatched in the popular science press. You don't even have to understand every word he says to appreciate him… His newest book, Brilliant! . . . focuses the narrative on the man most responsible for the explosion in LED lighting that is currently sweeping the globe.”

—Salon.com “How the World Works” column

 
“[A]n impeccably researched, comprehensive history of the SSL [solid-state lighting] industry, whose products will revolutionize the way we see the world.”

—Daily Yomiuri, Tokyo, Japan  (one of Japan's leading English-language newspapers)