\n Some experts have hailed his invention as important as Thomas Edison\u2019s incandescent light bulb.\n <\/p>\n
\n And so, it\u2019s big news when one of the world\u2019s greatest inventors says his next invention will far surpass the importance of his previous one.\n <\/p>\n
\n His goal: To create a power plant that uses a new kind of high-pulse laser for nuclear fusion<\/a>, producing an \u201cendless\u201d supply of efficient, clean energy. With nuclear fusion, there is no uranium involved and no chance for a meltdown.\n <\/p>\n \n If he cracks the code, its potential is limitless, said Nakamura, a professor of materials and of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Santa Barara (UCSB).\n <\/p>\n \n At an age when many look to retire, Nakamura, 72, bursts with energy.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cRetirement is very boring,\u201d he told CNN.\n <\/p>\n \n Long before Nakamura earned Nobel recognition, before he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame<\/a>, he was maligned and ridiculed \u2014 an engineer best known for explosions in his lab and for his lack of productivity.\n <\/p>\n \n Nakamura worked at a then-little known Japanese chemical company called Nichia Corporation, in 1979, heading its research and development team, comprised of just two people.\n <\/p>\n \n But after about 10 years in, he\u2019d developed only three products \u2014 and none sold well. At company soccer and softball games, his colleagues harangued him saying, \u201cWhy haven\u2019t you produced anything? You need to quit!\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Afterward, on Friday nights, Nakamura often returned to the office and roamed the halls taking on extra duty as an overnight security guard.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cYeah,\u201d Nakamura said with a laugh, \u201cI had to check the whole company walking around.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Feeling isolated, Nakamura developed a mentality of what he calls \u201cinvention by anger,\u201d an extreme drive to prove others wrong. All his managers told him the same thing: You must quit.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI became so desperate,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n \n Nakamura grew up in a small Japanese fishing village where he learned to love nature and the color blue because of the ocean.\n <\/p>\n \n His experience tinkering, toiling and blowing up stuff in his lab had given him the idea to chase his dream of cracking the code to blue LEDs.\n <\/p>\n \n Major corporations like IBM, General Electric, Bell Labs, Sony and Toshiba invested millions over the decades trying to solve the mystery. Red and green LEDs were easily mastered, yet the solution to making blue LEDs remained elusive because blue light has a shorter wavelength and requires significantly more energy to emit.\n <\/p>\n \n At stake was the potential for a multibillion-dollar industry.\n <\/p>\n \n In a last-ditch effort to save his job, Nakamura approached Nichia\u2019s founder and chairman Nobuo Ogawa.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cCan I develop blue LEDs?\u201d Nakamura asked.\n <\/p>\n \n He couldn\u2019t believe what came next.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cOK, no problem,\u201d Ogawa said.\n <\/p>\n \n Nakamura was given a budget of $3 million, an unheard-of amount in 1988 that represented 2% of the company\u2019s annual sales. Two-thirds of the money was for equipment; the rest was to be spent on studying and learning techniques that could lead to a breakthrough.\n <\/p>\n \n Nakamura then spent a year in a lab at the University of Florida learning about metal-organic chemical vapor deposition, or MOCVD.\n <\/p>\n \n At 34, he\u2019d never stepped foot on a plane. He also never had a scientific paper published \u2014 a fact that earned scorn in Florida. To those with PhDs in the lab, Nakamura was a nobody with zero academic chops. They treated him like a lowly technician, he said, constantly asking him to fix this and fix that.\n <\/p>\n \n He quietly raged. \u201cI feel resentful when people look down on me,\u201d he once said. \u201cAt that time, I developed more fighting spirit. I would not allow myself to be beaten by such people.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n When he returned to Japan in 1989, more hurdles were thrown his way. His biggest fan, the founder of Nichia, stepped aside as president.\n <\/p>\n \n And in his pursuit of a breakthrough, Nakamura chose to go all-in on studying the material gallium nitride as the key to unlocking blue LEDs. Almost every other researcher in the world worked with a different material, zinc selenide.\n <\/p>\n \n This became a huge problem, he said, when a renowned researcher held a seminar at Nichia with an emphatic message: gallium nitride was a dead end. Among those in the audience was Nakamura\u2019s new boss.\n <\/p>\n \n By day\u2019s end, a hand-written note arrived on his desk, ordering Nakamura to halt all work.\n <\/p>\n \n He rejected the order. \u201cI threw it away in the garbage,\u201d he told CNN, smiling.\n <\/p>\n \n The tamer of nature and successor to Edison turned out to be an unknown researcher at a Japanese company few had heard of.\n <\/p>\n \n Forbes Magazine\n <\/p>\n \n More notes arrived every few weeks with the same order. He tossed them in the trash, too.\n <\/p>\n \n In Japanese culture, he said, it is nearly unheard of to ignore a superior\u2019s orders. In fact, Nakamura stopped attending weekly R&D briefings so that he wouldn\u2019t have to tell colleagues what he was doing.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI became so angry,\u201d he said, \u201cso that I make the decision\u201d to keep going and keep chasing his dream.\n <\/p>\n \n Within months, Nakamura was vindicated. He experienced \u201cthe greatest moment of my life,\u201d when he made a simple LED that illuminated with a soft violet-blue light. He wasn\u2019t sure how long the light might last.\n <\/p>\n \n He left for the night, and, in the morning, the light still glowed. \u201cIt was still very dim, but it\u2019s surviving,\u201d he said. \u201cThat moment is very \u2018Oh my gosh!\u2019\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n On November 29, 1993, Nichia held a news conference that shocked the electronics world. The blue LED had been conquered.\n <\/p>\n \n It turned out Nakamura was right: Gallium nitride proved to be the key.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe tamer of nature and successor to Edison,\u201d Forbes magazine once wrote<\/a>, \u201cturned out to be an unknown researcher at a Japanese company few had heard of.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Nichia and Nakamura eventually had a public falling out with back-and-forth lawsuits. The two sides settled their landmark dispute in 2005 \u2014 with Nichia agreeing to pay him $8.1 million<\/a>, far less than the nearly $180 million a Japanese court had ruled Nakamura deserved for his invention.\n <\/p>\n \n Almost all of the money, he said, went to \u201cattorney fees and also taxes.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n He prefers not to dwell on that part of his past. He\u2019s proud of what he invented. Plus, he said, \u201cWinning the Nobel Prize was greater.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI\u2019m very happy,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n \n Nichia didn\u2019t respond to CNN\u2019s request for comment.\n <\/p>\n \n A recent report by the International Atomic Energy<\/a> found that if old light bulbs were still used around the world, global electricity needs would be nearly unsustainable \u2014 \u201caround 70% higher electricity consumption for indoor lighting in buildings.\u201d The electricity saved on home lighting from LEDs, the report found, roughly equals the power used by the entire country of South Korea.\n <\/p>\n \n Nakamura is focused on the future and what he feels will have an even greater environmental impact by producing limitless energy with zero emissions.\n <\/p>\n \n To meet this goal, he has formed Blue Laser Fusion<\/a>, a company that uses his blue LED technology to create laser power that could transform energy generation around the world.\n <\/p>\n \n About 99.5% of nuclear fusion research over the decades, he estimated, has focused on using powerful magnetic fields to create endless power. Nakamura believes the answer lies in the 0.5%.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe story is very similar to the blue LED development,\u201d Nakamura said.\n <\/p>\n \n In December 2022, researchers at the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore Lab in California, a core part of the US Department of Energy (DOE), achieved the first-ever \u201cfusion gain,\u201d<\/a> a major scientific breakthrough, when a laser-induced reaction produced more energy than it takes to trigger it.\n <\/p>\n \n Nakamura was not involved in that experiment. However, he had already begun developing a new high-power laser concept for inertial fusion, drawing upon his pioneering work in LEDs and laser diodes.\n <\/p>\n \n He co-founded Blue Laser Fusion in November 2022. The DOE fusion breakthrough further energized him. Nakamura is determined to take what was proven as scientifically possible in the lab and turn it into a functioning power plant.\n <\/p>\n \n He said Blue Laser Fusion has seen breakthrough after breakthrough in the years since.\n <\/p>\n![\"Nakamura](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/uc-santa-barbara-perko-49a4155-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Nakamura](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/dsc-6709.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n