Article: Nice Guys Can Finish As Geniuses at University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.

By Jon Van, Chicago Tribune Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Jan. 25--The cheap and reliable semiconductor lasers critical to DVD players, bar code readers and scores of other devices owe their existence in some small way to the demanding workload thrust upon Downstate railroad crews decades ago.

Nick Holonyak Jr., a professor at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, has for 50 years pioneered discoveries in optoelectronics.

But he might just as well have chosen less theoretical, more physical work.

The son of Slavic immigrants who settled in southern Illinois' coal country, Holonyak knew that if he didn't bring home ...

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