Among the five originally approved Nobel Prizes (in chemistry, physics, medicine, literature and peace), it is the physics prize that is awarded according to the strictest rules and has the highest authority in its industry. That there is only a 20-year moratorium on awarding a prize for a specific discovery - it must be tested by time. Physicists are at great risk - now they do not make discoveries at a young age, and the candidate may well die elementarily within 20 years after his discovery.
Zhores Ivanovich Alferov received an award in 2000 for the development of semiconductors for use in optoelectronics. Alferov first obtained such semiconductor heterostructures in the mid-1970s, so the Swedish academicians who chose the laureates even exceeded the “rule of 20 years”.
By the time the Nobel Prize was awarded, Zhores Ivanovich already had all the national awards that a scientist could receive. The Nobel Prize was not the end, but the crown of his brilliant career. Curious and significant facts from it are given below:
1. Zhores Alferov was born in 1930 in Belarus. His father was a major Soviet leader, so the family moved frequently. Even before the Great Patriotic War, the Alferovs managed to live in Novosibirsk, Barnaul and Stalingrad.
2. An unusual name was common practice in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. Parents often named their children after famous revolutionaries of the past and even the present. Brother Zhores was called Marx.
3. During the war, Marx Alferov died at the front, and his family lived in the Sverdlovsk region. There Zhores finished 8 classes. Then the father was transferred to Minsk, where the remaining only son graduated from school with honors. Zhores found his brother's grave only in 1956.
4. A recent student was admitted to the Faculty of Electronic Engineering of the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute without examinations.
5. Already in his third year, Zhores Alferov began to conduct independent experiments, and after graduation he was hired by the famous Phystech. Since then, guides have become the main theme of the future Nobel laureate's work.
6. The first significant success of Alferov was the collective development of domestic transistors. Based on the materials of five years of work, the young physicist wrote his Ph.D. thesis, and the country awarded him the Order of the Badge of Honor.
7. The topic of independent research, chosen by Alferov after defending his thesis, became the topic of his life. He decided to work on semiconductor heterostructures, although in the 1960s they were considered unpromising in the Soviet Union.
8. To put it simply, a heterostructure is a combination of two semiconductors grown on a common substrate. These semiconductors and the gas formed between them form a triple semiconductor, with which a laser can be produced.
9. Alferov and his group have been working on the idea of creating a heterostructure laser since 1963, and obtained the desired result in 1968. The discovery was awarded the Lenin Prize.
10. Then Alferov's group began to work on receivers of light radiation and again achieved resounding success. Heterostructure assemblies equipped with lenses have worked great in solar cells, allowing them to capture nearly the entire spectrum of sunlight. This significantly (hundreds of times) increased the efficiency of solar cells.
11. The structures developed by Alferov's team have found their application in the production of LEDs, solar cells, mobile phones and computer technology.
12. Solar panels, developed by Alferov's team, have been supplying the Mir space station with electricity for 15 years.
13. In 1979 the scientist was elected an academician, and in the 1990s he was elected vice-president of the Academy of Sciences. In 2013, he was nominated for the post of President of the Academy of Sciences, Alferov took second place.
14. For 16 years since 1987, Zhores Alferov headed Phystech, where he studied in the distant 1950s.
15. Academician Alferov was a people's deputy of the USSR and a deputy of the State Duma of all convocations except the first.
16. Zhores Ivanovich is a full holder of the Order of Merit for the Fatherland and a holder of five more orders, including the Order of Lenin, the highest award of the USSR.
17. Among the prizes received by Alferov, along with the Nobel Prize, include the State and Lenin Prizes of the USSR, the State Prize of Russia and about a dozen foreign awards.
18. The scientist independently established and partially finances the Foundation for the Support of Talented Youth.
19. The Nobel Prize in Physics can be divided into three, but not in equal proportions. Therefore, half of the prize was given to the American Jack Kilby, and the second was divided between Alferov and the German physicist Herbert Kroemer.
20. The size of the Nobel Prize in 2000 was 900 thousand dollars. Ten years later, Alferov, Kilby and Kroemer would have split 1.5 million.
21. Academician Mstislav Keldysh wrote that during a visit to a laboratory in the United States, local scientists frankly admitted that they were repeating Alferov's inventions.
22. Alferov is an excellent storyteller, lecturer and orator. Kroemer and Kilby together persuaded him to speak at a banquet for the awards - one laureate speaks from one award, and the American and German recognized the superiority of the Russian scientist.
23. Despite his rather mature age, Zhores Ivanovich leads a very active lifestyle. He directs universities, departments and institutes in Moscow and St. Petersburg, with the Northern capital devoted to Monday and Friday, and Moscow - the rest of the week.
24. In political views, the scientist is close to the communists, but he is not a member of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. He has repeatedly criticized the reforms of the 1980s and 1990s and the resulting stratification of society.
25. Zhores Ivanovich is married for the second time, he has a son, daughter, grandson and two granddaughters.
