Inventor of LED
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 or1 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, , Holonyak received the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize at a ceremony in Washington. This marks the 10th 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 little2, 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 school3, Holonyak worked at Bell Labs. He later went to General Electric4, where he invented a switch now widely used in house dimmer switches5.
Later, Holonyak started looking into how semiconductors could be used to generate light. But while his colleagues were looking at how to generate invisible light, be 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.
练习：
1.Holonyak's colleagues thought he would fail in his research on LEDs at the time when he started it.
ARightBWrongCNot mentioned
2.Holonyak believed that his students that were working with him on the project would get the Lemelson-MIT Prize sooner or later.
ARightBWrongCNot mentioned
3.Holonyak was the inventor of the transistor in the early 1950s.
ARightBWrongCNot mentioned
4.Holonyak believed that LEDs would become very popular in the future.
ARightBWrongCNot mentioned
5.Holonyak said that you should not do anything you are not interested in.
ARightBWrongCNot mentioned
6.Edith Flanigen is the only co-inventor of LEDs.
ARightBWrongCNot mentioned
7.The Lemelson-MIT Prize has a history of over 100 years.
ARightBWrongCNot mentioned
答案与题解：
1.A第一段第一句就说：“When Nick Holonyak set out to create a new kind of visible lighting using semiconductor alloys, his colleagues thought he was unrealistic.”
2.C通篇文章没有提到Holonyak相信他的学生将获得Lemelson-MIT Prize这件事。
3.B第四段说到发明晶体管的是Holonyak的老师John Bardeen，不是Holonyak本人。
4.A第六段的句子“ ... he suspected that LEDs would become as commonplace as they are today ...”就包含了popular的意思。
5.C通篇文章(包括第七段)没有提到“不要做你不感兴趣的事”。
6.C通篇文章没有提到Edith Flanigen是Holonyak发明LEDs的合作者，更不要说是唯一的合作者。
7.B第二段说到，是the Lemelson-MIT Prize成立10周年，按此推算，the Lemelson- MIT Prize是在1994年设立的。
