Two past European Inventor Award finalists have been awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. European Inventor Award 2007 finalist Shuji Nakamura (US) has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, and European Inventor Award 2008 finalist Stefan Hell (Germany) the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The award ceremony will take place in Stockholm on 10 December. Both scientists have previously been honoured by the European Patent Office through its annual European Inventor Award.

The Nobel Academy is recognising Shuji Nakamura jointly with Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano for their invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Nakamura was named a finalist by the European Patent Office for the European Inventor Award 2007 in the "Non-European countries" category for the same invention.

Stefan Hell, along with Eric Betzig and William E. Moerner, were announced as the winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy. For his ground-breaking work in developing the STED microscope, Hell was a finalist in the "Lifetime achievement" category of the European Inventor Award in 2008.

Launched in 2006, the European Inventor Award is presented annually by the European Patent Office in five categories to individuals and teams whose pioneering inventions provides answers to the challenges of our age and thereby contribute to social progress, economic growth and prosperity.

Hell and Nakamura are not the first European Inventor Award finalists to go on to receive a Nobel Prize: German physicist Peter Grünberg, together with Albert Fert of France, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2007 for the discovery of giant magnetoresistance, after having received the European Inventor Award in 2006 in the category "Universities and research institutes". This discovery was essential for a breakthrough in gigabyte hard-disk drives.