[1] Esaki was born in Takaida-mura, Nakakawachi-gun, Osaka Prefecture (now part of Higashiōsaka City) and grew up in Kyoto.

Meanwhile, American physicists John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley invented the transistor, which encouraged Esaki to change fields from vacuum tube to heavily-doped germanium and silicon research in Sony.

One year later, he recognized that when the PN junction width of germanium is thinned, the current-voltage characteristic is dominated by the influence of the tunnel effect and, as a result, he discovered that as the voltage is increased, the current decreases inversely, indicating negative resistance.

His unique "molecular beam epitaxy" thin-film crystal growth method can be regulated quite precisely in ultrahigh vacuum.

[8] In the 1994 Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, Esaki suggests a list of "five don'ts" which anyone in realizing his creative potential should follow.

In recognition of three Nobel laureates' contributions, the bronze statues of Shin'ichirō Tomonaga, Leo Esaki, and Makoto Kobayashi were set up in the Central Park of Azuma 2 in Tsukuba City in 2015.