PRESENT AT THE TRANSFORMATION:

Blue LED lighting -- the Nobelists' invention -- was the missing ingredient that allowed the creation of LED lamps.)

Less familiar is the illumination revolution LED bulbs have helped set off in the developing world. For a growing proportion of the more than a billion people who live without reliable sources of electricity, LED lights, in tandem with solar panels, have been a godsend.

Nearly 5 percent of Africans without access to electricity, or some 28.5 million people, now use solar-powered LED lights. That's up from 1 percent five years ago, according to figures released this month by Lighting Africa, a project of the International Finance Corp., the private-sector investment arm of the World Bank. There's a growing market in South Asia, too.

Worldwide, in the past six months, 2.1 million LED-solar products have been sold to people who are unable to plug in to electrical grids, the IFC says. Sales have been growing at a rate of 150 percent annually for several years -- a function of both the demand for lighting and the improved quality of LED lamps.

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