Zhores Ivanovich Alferov - a man of legend! A world famous physicist, Nobel laureate, specialist in the field of semiconductors. His discoveries became the basis for all modern electronic devices. Lasers, LEDs, solar panels and fiber optic networks are known to us thanks to Jaures and his students.
Biography
Zhores Ivanovich Alferov - the great Russian and Soviet physicist, the only living in Russia laureate of the Nobel Prize in physics, laureate of many other well-known awards, full holder of the Order for Merit to the Fatherland, member of various academies of sciences around the world, deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, author of more than 550 scientific papers, 50 inventions, author of books and monographs.
Zhores Ivanovich was born in 1930 in the Byelorussian SSR in the family of a Belarusian Ivan Alferov and a Jewess Anna Rosenblum. Jaurès got his name in honor of the famous French leader Jean Jaurès, in those years, 1920-1930, it was a common practice to name children in honor of famous political leaders. His father was a well-known manager in the USSR, so their family often moved, and in the pre-war time they managed to live in Siberia, in the Leningrad and Stalingrad regions. During the war, the Alferov family lived in the Sverdlovsk region, his father worked as a director of a pulp and paper mill, and his older brother, Marx, fought at the front. In 1944, Marx Ivanovich died at the age of 20 during the Korsun-Shevchenkovsky operation. According to Zhores Ivanovich, the strength of spirit and moral qualities of the elder brother had a great influence on the formation of the character of the scientist.
After the war, Zhores Ivanovich and his family returned to Belarus, to Minsk, where he graduated from high school with a gold medal and entered the Belarusian Polytechnic Institute at the Energy Department, but after studying for several semesters, he decided to try to enter the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute. He was accepted there without exams. After the institute, he began to work at the Physicotechnical Institute A.F. Joffe. In 1961 he became a candidate of physical and mathematical sciences, and in 1970 - a doctor of physical and mathematical sciences. sciences. From 1987 to 2003, he served as director of the institute, in which he began working even after graduation from the institute. For some time Zhores Ivanovich was the editor-in-chief of the journal Physics and Technology of Semiconductors.
In 2001, the scientist created a fund to support education and science. Since 2010, Zhores has been the head of the Skolkovo Innovation Center.
According to the Forbes magazine, Zhores Ivanovich Alferov is one of the most influential Russians of the last century.
Career
As far back as December 1952, at the distribution of students at the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute, Zhores Ivanovich chose the Leningrad Institute of Physics and Technology (LETI), led by the famous Ioffe throughout the USSR. Jaurès as part of one of the institute's groups took part in the creation of the first transistors. A few years later he received his first government award - the Badge of Honor. After defending his dissertation in 1961, the scientist began to study the physics of heterostructures, to which he devoted his doctoral dissertation. This was a breakthrough in science, a new round of knowledge, which gave impetus to the creation of all modern electronic devices. In 1971, he received his first international award - the Ballantyne Medal, and in 1972 - the Lenin Prize. But that was only the beginning of his stunning career. More major discoveries were yet to come.
In 2010, Zhores Ivanovich was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery of semiconductor heterostructures for high-speed optoelectronics, despite the fact that the physics prize is awarded according to the most stringent rules in the industry. Alferov shared the award with two other scientists - German Kremer and American Kilby. It is known that the scientist spent his fee on acquiring an apartment in Moscow, and partly he donated to the Foundation for the Support of Education and Science.
Zhores Alferov has many government and international awards, because his contribution to the development of world science is invaluable. For example, for 15 years, solar panels developed by Alferov’s team supplied the Mir space station with electricity. In 1997, an asteroid was named after him, and in 2001 the name "Academician Zhores Alferov" received a Yakut diamond weighing more than 70 carats.
