Prof. Isamu Akasaki in memoriam

Nobel laureate Prof. Isamu Akasaki and father of IWN passed away on April 1st, 2021 at the age of 92. He was a brilliant and creative scientist, engineer, and teacher. Together with Hiroshi Amano he achieved in 1989 a breakthrough in the p-conductivity of wide bandgap materials. The discovery of Mg-doping in GaN without self-compensation effects paved the way for the realization of III-nitride  light emitting diodes. Furthermore, after the Topical Workshop on III-V Nitrides in 1995 held in Nagoya and the MRS symposium about III-V Nitrides held in Boston in 1996, Akasaki was one of the driving forces and spirits to establish in 1997 the International Conference on Nitride Semiconductors (ICNS) and he founded in 2000 the International Workshop on Group-III Nitrides (IWN). In 2014 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics together with Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura "for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources". In 2009 Akasaki was awarded the Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology and 2011 he achieved the IEEE Edison Medal. In 2021 Akasaki together with M. George Craford, Russell D. Dupuis, Nick Holonyak, and Shuji Nakamura were awarded the Queen Elisabeth Prize for Engineering "for the creation and development of LED lighting, which forms the basis of all solid state lighting technology". His insight and guidance will be greatly missed within the international III-nitride community and beyond.