1．Inventor of LED LED的发明者

When Nick Holonyak set out to create a new kind of visible lighting using semiconductor alloys, his colleagues thought he was unrealistic．Today, his discovery of light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, are used in everything from DVDs to alarm clocks to airports．Dozens of his students have continued his work, developing lighting used in traffic lights and other everyday technology．

On April 23, 2004, Holonyak received the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize at a ceremony in Washington．This marks the 1Oth year that the Lemelson-MIT Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT) has given the award to prominent inventors．

“Anytime you get an award, big or little, it’s always a surprise．”Holonyak said．

Holonyak, 75, was a student of John Bardeen, an inventor of the transistor, in the early 1950s. After graduate school, Holonyak worked at Ben Labs．He later went to General Electric, where he invented a switch now widely used in house dimmer switches．

Later, Holonyak started 1ooking into how semiconductors could be used to generate 1ight. But while his colleagues were 1ooking at how to generate invisible light, he wanted to generate visible light. The LEDS he invented in 1962 now last about 10 times longer than incandescent bulbs, and are more environmentally friendly and cost effective．

Holonyak, now a professor of electrical and computer engineering and physics at the University of Illinois, said he suspected that LEDs would become as commonplace as they are today, but didn’t realize how many uses they would have．

“You don’t know in the beginning．YOU think you’re doing something important．you think it’s worth doing, but you really can’t tell what the big payoff is going to be, and when, and how．You just don’t know, ”he said．

The Lemelson-MIT Program also recognized Edith Flanigen, 75, with the $100,000 Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award for her work on a new generation of “molecular sieves, ”that can separate molecules by size．

当Nick Holonyak着手用半导体合金创造一种新的可视照明设备的时候，同事们都认为他不现实。今天，他发现的发光二极管，或叫LED，使用范围覆盖从DVD到机场警钟的一切东西。他的许多学生继续着他的工作，发明了交通灯中使用的照明设备和其他的日用技术。

2004年4月23号，Holonyak在华盛顿的一次典礼上被授予麻省理工Lemelson项目的50万美元的奖金。这是麻省理工的Lemelson—MIT项目第十年颁奖给杰出的发明人。

“任何时候你得了奖，不论是大是小，总是一分惊喜，”Holonyak说。

Holonyak，75岁，是上世纪50年代初期晶体管的发明者John Bardeen的学生。从研究生院毕业之后，Holonyak在Bell实验室工作。之后去了通用电器公司，在那里他发明了一种开关，现在在家用减光开关中普遍使用。

后来，Holonyak开始研究如何应用半导体发电。当他的同事们正在研究如何发出看不见的光时，他却想要看得见的光。1962年他发明的LED，现在的持续时间可以比白炽灯泡长十倍，对环境要求更少，更有效。

Holonyak现在是伊利诺斯大学电子、计算机工程和物理专业的教授，他说他预测LED的使用有可能像今天这样普遍，但没有意识到它会有多少用途。

“开始的时候你并不知道，你认为你在做一件很重要的事情，你认为它值得做，但是你不能说出要付出多大的代价，什么时候付出，怎样付出。你并不知道，”他说。

Lemelson—MIT项目同样授予75岁的Edith Flanigen 10万美元的终身成就奖，她的工作是创造新一代的“分子筛”，也就是可以通过大小来分离分子。

★1).Holonyak’s colleagues thought he would fail in his research on LEDs at the time when he started it． A．Right

★2).Holonyak believed that his students that were working with him on the project would get the Lemelson-MIT Prize sooner or later．C．Not mentioned

★3).Holonyak was the inventor of the transistor in the early 1950s． B．Wrong

★4).Holonyak believed that LEDs would become very popular in the future． A．Right

★5).Holonyak said that you should not do anything you are not interested in． C．Not mentioned

★6).Edith Flanigen is the only co-inventor of LEDs． C．Not mentioned

★7).The Lemelson-MIT Prize has a history of over 100 years． B．Wrong