Where Does Nick Holonyak Come From?
Nick Holonyak, Jr., born November 3, 1928, was an American engineer best known for his groundbreaking work with light-emitting diodes (LEDs), including the creation of the first visible LED. He received his B.S. (1950), M.S. (1951), and PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he majored in electrical engineering (1954). Holonyak was the…
Nick Holonyak, Jr., born November 3, 1928, was an American engineer best known for his groundbreaking work with light-emitting diodes (LEDs), including the creation of the first visible LED.
He received his B.S. (1950), M.S. (1951), and PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he majored in electrical engineering (1954). Holonyak was the first graduate student of John Bardeen, co-inventor of the transistor and two-time Nobel laureate.
Holonyak worked in the General Electric (GE) electronics laboratory in Syracuse, New York, after serving in the military for two years (1955-57) and at Bell Telephone Laboratories for a year (1955-55). Several GE teams were working on optoelectronics, which includes converting electrical current into light. Robert N. Hall, a GE colleague, utilized a semiconductor diode to develop a laser. A semiconductor diode is a semiconductor device with positive and negative electrodes that can be used as a rectifier—that is, to convert alternating current to direct current.
Where Does Nick Holonyak Come From?
Nick Holonyak is from Zeigler, Illinois, in the United States.
