Leo Esaki

LEO ESAKI. Japanese physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973 (with Ivar Giaever and Brian David Josephson) for his work in electron tunneling in semiconductor materials which finally led to his invention of the Esaki diode which exploited that phenomenon. This research was done when he was with Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo (now known as Sony). He has also contributed in being a pioneer of the semiconductor superlattices