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Heading for the Light
A Closer Look at UCSB's Most Radical Engineering Professor


Hewlett-Packard, Xerox, Stanley Electric, Sharp, Sanyo, Sumitomo, Toshiba, Toyoda Gosei, NEC, Sony, Philips and two dozen universities spent a total of $1 billion trying to catch up to Shuji Nakamura throughout the 1990s. Two years ago he was offered a dozen professorships at 10 American and two European universities as well as positions at five of the U.S.'s top high-tech firms, for salaries as high as $500,000 a year and stock options worth $10 million.

That's when he decided to teach.

UCSB's Materials Dept. showed Nakamura to his new office in Engineering II in Fall 2000. He has his own lab at the university as well, where acquisition prices are measured in six figures. The lab was completed two months ago - about the same time Nakamura received notice that he would be the recipient of the 2002 Franklin Medal, a prize awarded in past years to researchers with names like Niels Bohr, Hans Bethe, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, Edwin Hubble, Guglielmo Marconi, Robert Millikan, Max Planck, Marie Curie, Orville Wright, Stephen Hawking and Jacques Cousteau

http://www.ucsbdailynexus.com/science/2002/2700.html

http://www.engineering.ucsb.edu/Announce/nakamura.html