Little Sun

A marriage of art and science, Little Sun was founded in 2012 by artist Olafur Eliasson and engineer Frederik Ottesen. Their collaboration produced the Little Sun lamp—a small, portable, solar light—that was first distributed to people living without electricity in Ethiopia. The lamp is a practical tool that enables students to study after dark, mothers to take better care of their children at night, and families to reduce the effects of toxic fumes from fuel. The lamp has also become an icon of the renewable energy future that is critical to humanity and the natural world.