Zhores Ivanovich Alferov is a legendary man! Great physicist of world renown, Nobel Prize 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 is a great Russian and Soviet physicist, the only Nobel Prize winner in physics currently living in Russia, a laureate of many other well-known prizes, a full holder of the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, a member of various academies of sciences around the world, a deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, author of over 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 Jewish woman Anna Rosenblum. Jaures received his name in honor of the famous French figure Jean Jaures, in those years, 1920-1930, it was a common practice to name children after famous political leaders. His father was a well-known manager in the USSR, so their family moved frequently, and before the war 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, Marks, fought at the front. In 1944, Marks Ivanovich, at the age of 20, died during the Korsun-Shevchenko operation. According to Zhores Ivanovich, the strength of mind 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 faculty, but after studying for several semesters, he decided to try to enter the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute. He was admitted there without exams. After graduation, he began working at the A. F. Ioffe. In 1961 he became a candidate of physical and mathematical sciences, and in 1970 - a doctor of physics and mathematics. sciences. From 1987 to 2003 he served as director of the institute, where he began to work even after graduating 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 Forbes magazine, Zhores Ivanovich Alferov is one of the most influential Russians of the last century.
Career
Back in December 1952, during the assignment of students at the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute, Zhores Ivanovich chose the Leningrad Institute of Physics and Technology (LETI) for work, which was headed by Ioffe, famous throughout the USSR. Zhores, as part of one of the institute 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 Ph. D. thesis in 1961, the scientist began to study the physics of heterostructures, to which he devoted his doctoral dissertation. It 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 prize, 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 his discovery of semiconductor heterostructures for high-speed optoelectronics, despite the fact that the physics prize is awarded according to the strictest rules in the industry. Alferov shared the prize with two other scientists - the German Kremer and the American Kilby. It is known that the scientist spent his fee on purchasing an apartment in Moscow, and donated part of it 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 have supplied power to the Mir space station. In 1997 an asteroid was named after him, and in 2001 the name "Academician Zhores Alferov" was given to a Yakut diamond weighing more than 70 carats.
Personal life
Zhores Alferov was married twice. The first marriage was early and short-lived, it ended in a loud scandal, as a result of which the ex-wife, thanks to her influential relatives, sued the scientist's apartment in Leningrad, leaving him with nothing. Zhores even had to spend the night in his laboratory for some time, while he was waiting for a place in the dormitory of the institute. From his first marriage, Zhores Ivanovich left a daughter, but after the divorce, the ex-wife forbade them to communicate, and, despite the passage of a lot of time, communication is still not supported.
Zhores Ivanovich registered his second marriage in 1967 with Tamara Darskaya, and for more than fifty years the spouses have lived in a strong family in peace and harmony, together they raised Tamara's daughter from her first marriage, Irina, and a common child, Ivan. It is known that Ivan Zhoresovich was also engaged in science for some time, only in the field of astronomy, but then he opened an enterprise selling equipment for timber industry enterprises and devoted his time to business development. Now Zhores Ivanovich has already become a grandfather - he has two grandchildren and a granddaughter.
