Japanese physicists Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano, and Shuji Nakamura developed between 1989 and 1993 the high-efficiency blue light-emitting diode based on gallium nitride, solving a problem that had blocked white LED lighting for decades. Akasaki and Amano worked at Nagoya University; Nakamura did so at Nichia Corporation, a small company in Tokushima. Combining blue light with yellow phosphor made it possible to generate low-power white light, transforming global lighting and enabling high-resolution displays. They received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2014.