2000 Jospeh M. Jacobson

The Physicist Joseph M. Jacobson, born in 1965 in Massachusetts, is the inventor of the electronic paper based on electrophoresis-based technology (known as E Ink), which is widely used in electronic devices such as e-readers. The American studied physics at the Brown University and received his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). During his time as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, he set the world record for the shortest pulse ever produced by a laser (in optical cycles).
In 1997, together with JD Albert, Barrett Comiskey, Russ Wilcox and Jerome Rubin, he founded the start-up company E Ink Corporation in Boston. Jacobson managed to load a thousandfold of information onto a "piece of paper" that has properties of "old paper" but contains millions of microencapsulated globules that can change to black or white through an electronic impuls. Since then he works in MIT's Media Lab. In 2002, the physicist received the Gutenberg Prize of the City of Mainz and the International Gutenberg Society for his groundbreaking development of a new form of display suitable for revolutionizing communication in a fundamental way.