Russian physicist Nikolai Basov won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1964. Basov’s research led to the development of the maser and the laser.
Nikolai Gennadiyevich Basov (1922-2001), Soviet physicist and Nobel Laureate. Basov helped to develop both the laser and the maser, for which he shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in physics with Soviet physicist Aleksandr Mikhailovich Prokhorov and American physicist Charles Hard Townes.
Born in Novaya Usman’, Russia, Basov graduated from the Moscow Engineering and Physics Institute in 1950 with a degree equivalent to an M.S. degree in physics. He obtained a Ph.D. degree from the Lebedev Institute of Physics at the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow in 1956. In 1953 he became a researcher at the Lebedev Institute. Basov took on various directorial duties at the in 1958, and became head of the institute in 1973.
Basov, together with his teacher Prokhorov, conducted groundbreaking research in quantum mechanics, which concerns the behavior of atoms at different energy levels(see Quantum Theory). They first deduced that quantum mechanics permits the amplification of microwaves and light waves (see Electromagnetic Radiation) by inducing atoms to release energy. This helped them construct the theoretical basis of the process now called microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, or, more commonly, maser. The maser quickly found many applications for its ability to send strong microwaves in any direction and resulted in improvements in radar. The maser also provided the basis for an atomic clock (see Clocks and Watches) that was far more accurate than any mechanical timepiece ever invented. Basov later helped develop the visible-light maser, or laser (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation), which delivers infrared or visible light instead of microwaves. Both the maser and the laser can collect and amplify energy waves hundreds of times. They can also produce a beam with almost perfectly parallel light waves and little or no interference or static.
Zhores Alferov, born in 1930, Russian physicist who was cowinner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in physics. Alferov shared half of the Nobel Prize with American physicist Herbert Kroemer for their independent yet parallel improvements to semiconductors during the early 1960s. Their enhanced semiconductor design is widely used in microelectronics. The other half of the Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to a scientist whose invention helped launched the ongoing revolution in information and communication technology: American electrical engineer and inventor Jack S. Kilby. In 1958 Kilby designed and constructed the first integrated circuit.
Zhores Ivanovich Alferov was born in 1930 in Vitebek, Belarus, in what was then part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). After graduating in 1952 from the V. I. Ulyanov Electrotechnical Institute in Saint Petersburg (now known as the Saint Petersburg State Technical University), he joined the staff of the A. F. Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute, also located in Saint Petersburg. Alferov earned his doctoral degree in physics and mathematics at the institute in 1970, and he became the institute’s director in 1987.
In the early 1960s Alferov’s work centered on creating faster transistors. Transistors regulate the passage of electrons and are found in almost all electronic devices. Semiconductors, materials that have the properties of both a conductor (capacity to carry an electric current) and an insulator (resistance to an electric current), are one of the key components of transistors. Conventional semiconducting materials, such as silicon, face a limitation: negatively charged electrons flow in one direction, leaving positively charged “holes” that flow in the opposite direction. These opposing flows reduce the transistor’s efficiency.
Alferov tried a new method: Instead of working with a single block of semiconducting material, he experimented with structures made of layers of different semiconducting materials. By combining separate materials such as gallium arsenide and aluminum gallium arsenide in layers as thin as a few atoms, he vastly improved transistor performance. These layered semiconductors are called heterostructures.
Alferov also realized that under the right circumstance, electrons and holes could be combined and used to generate light. This was the concept behind the heterostructure laser, which Alferov and Kroemer proposed independently in 1963. Alferov’s team was later among the first to construct practical lasers based on semiconductor heterostructures.
Today, the heterostructures that Alferov and Kroemer pioneered are used in satellite communication systems, in the base stations for mobile-telephone networks, and in the fiber-optic technology that speeds Internet data throughout the world. Heterostructure lasers make it possible for CD players to reproduce music and for the bar-code scanners in stores to automatically record sales. Future improvements in laser-diode technology may one day replace the conventional light bulb with light-emitting devices based on semiconductor heterostructures.
