Shuji Nakamura

Shuji Nakamura gave the world a colour of light it had never been able to make, and in doing so lit the modern age. Born in 1954, this Japanese engineer solved a problem others had abandoned as impossible: how to build a bright, mass-producible blue light-emitting diode from gallium nitride. His breakthrough, achieved in 1993 while at the small Nichia Corporation, made efficient white LED lighting possible and earned him a share of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics.

His Sun in Gemini, the sign of the messenger and the endlessly curious mind, sits at the very top of his chart in the tenth house, the noon-throne of career and public renown, four ace cards of visibility and mission. Little wonder his name became synonymous with a whole lighting revolution. A Leo Ascendant lends the regal, torch-holding presence of one born to lead others forward.

His Moon in Capricorn rests in the fifth house of creativity and one's own inventions. Stoic, dutiful, patient, this is the Moon that grew up fast and treats each creation as its baby; he pressed on with the blue LED alone even when told to stop, later founding his own ventures and holding over two hundred patents.