Birth and Education
Alferov was born in Vitebsk, Byelorussian SSR, Soviet Union to a Belarusian father and a Jewish mother. In 1952 he graduated from V. I. Ulyanov (Lenin) Electrotechnical Institute in Leningrad. Since 1953 he has worked in the Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences. From the Institute he earned several scientific degrees: a Candidate of Sciences in Technology in 1961 and a Doctor of Sciences in Physics and Mathematics in 1970. He has been director of the Institute since 1987. He was elected a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1972, and a full member in 1979. From 1989 he has been Vice-President of the USSR Academy of Sciences and President of its Saint Petersburg Scientific Center. Since 1995 he is a member of the State Duma on the list of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. He received 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics together with Herbert Kroemer, "for developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and optoelectronics".
Alferov invented the heterotransistor. This coped with much higher frequencies than its predecessors, and apparently revolutionised the mobile phone and satellite communications. Alverov and Kroemer independently applied this technology to firing laser lights. This in turn revolutionised semiconductor design in a host of areas, including LEDs, barcodes readers and CDs.
Hermann Grimmeiss, of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards Nobel prizes, said: "Without Alferov, it would not be possible to transfer all the information from satellites down to the Earth or to have so many telephone lines between cities."
Read more about this topic: Zhores Alferov
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