Nick Holonyak, Jr. is an American engineer and educator. He is noted particularly for his 1962 invention of a light-emitting diode (LED) that emitted visible red light instead of infrared light; Holonyak was then working at the General Electric Company's research laboratory in Syracuse, New York. He was born on November 3, 1928 in Zeigler, Illinois, United States. He received his BS (1950), MS (1951), and PhD (1954) in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois. He was the first graduate student of John Bardeen, who later received two Nobel Prizes in Physics.

He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (1973) and National Academy of Sciences (1984), fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science (1984), foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1999), and inductee to the National Inventors Hall of Fame (2008). He has received the IEEE Edison Medal (1989) and Medal of Honor (2003) as well as the US National Medal of Science (1990) and National Medal of Technology (2002), the Japan Prize (1995), the Global Energy International Prize (Russia, 2003) and the Lemelson-MIT Prize (2005).