What Is Nick Holonyak Known For?
On November 3, 1928, Nick Holonyak Jr. was born in Zeigler, Illinois. His parents were Russian immigrants. His father worked in a coal mine. Holonyak was the first member of his family to attend school. He once worked 30 hours straight on the Illinois Central Railroad before deciding that a life of hard labor was…
On November 3, 1928, Nick Holonyak Jr. was born in Zeigler, Illinois. His parents were Russian immigrants. His father worked in a coal mine. Holonyak was the first member of his family to attend school. He once worked 30 hours straight on the Illinois Central Railroad before deciding that a life of hard labor was not for him and that he would rather go to school. According to Knight Ridder, “the inexpensive and reliable semiconductor lasers vital to DVD players, bar code readers, and scores of other gadgets owe their existence in some tiny way to the hard workload put upon Downstate train personnel decades ago.”
Holonyak joined the faculty of the University of Illinois in 1963. Holonyak was appointed John Bardeen Endowed Chair Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1993. Holonyak looked into methods for producing quantum dot lasers. He and Dr. Milton Feng headed a transistor laser research lab at the University, which was supported by the US Department of Defense through DARPA. Holonyak left the company in 2013.
What Is Nick Holonyak Known For?
Holonyak (pronounced huh-LON-yak) is credited with creating the first viable visible-spectrum LED, which is now widely used in light bulbs, gadget displays, and lasers around the world.
