I suspect there's a lot of truth in this. This reminds me of going for an interview at Durham University in the early 80s. A professor in the physics departmen

I suspect there's a lot of truth in this. This reminds me of going for an interview at Durham University in the early 80s. A professor in the physics department proudly showed me a prototype blue LED that they had developed. It was indeed quite a novelty at that time. Ah, yes - a quick search confirms there was research in this area going on at the time: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0022-3727/16/6/021/pdf https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0022-3727/16/6/02...