Optical scientists around the world are celebrating the news that this year's Nobel Prizes for both physics and chemistry have been awarded to important developments in photonics. On 7 October it was announced that the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics had been awarded to three Japanese scientists — Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura — for the invention of efficient blue LEDs based on gallium nitride (GaN), which underpin bright and energy-saving white light sources. Then, just a day later, the news broke that Eric Betzig, Stefan Hell and William Moerner were to share the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy and single-molecule microscopy — techniques that successfully overcome the Abbe diffraction limit.

The physics award celebrates the pioneering work on GaN blue LED fabrication that was conducted independently in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Akasaki and Amano at Nagoya University and by Nakamura at the Japanese chemical company Nichia. Both groups were trying to find ways of fabricating a high-quality doped GaN material suitable for the formation of a light-emitting p–n junction. Their achievements in this area ultimately led to the successful commercialization of high-performance blue LEDs, which, when combined with suitable phosphors, yield the white LEDs that are now leading a revolution in energy efficient lighting. The work also paved the way for the development of the blue semiconductor laser, commonly used in Blu-ray high-capacity optical disk data storage, and ultraviolet LEDs and lasers that are useful as light sources for sterilization, adhesive curing and biomedical applications.

The chemistry award recognizes the transition of microscopy to nanoscopy (microscopy with nanometre-scale spatial resolution). This makes it possible to use visible light to observe chemical and biological processes on an unprecedented scale and perform single-molecule microscopy. The key to the advance was learning how to control fluorescence so that its origin can be determined in a more precise manner. Betzig and Moerner both contributed to the development of temporal schemes that switch fluorescence on and off in different locations to make this possible. In contrast, Hell developed a scheme that uses a special ring-shaped laser beam to quench or extinguish fluorescence everywhere except for a very small inner region.

We wish to heartily congratulate the prize winners. In-depth coverage of both awards will be appearing in our next issue.