Zhores Ivanovich Alferov

In 1967, Alferov married Tamara Darskaya, who was working at a big Space Enterprise under the guidance of Academician V.P. Glushko in Moscow. Therefore, for around six months, Alferov had to make weekly trip from Leningrad to Moscow. Later she moved to Leningrad.

Professor Alferov is now the Editor-in-Chief of a Russian journal, Pis'ma v Zhurnal Tekhnicheskoi Fiziki and a member of the Editorial Board of a Russian journal Nauka i Zhizn'.

Zhores Ivanovich Alferov was born on March 15, 1930, Vitebsk in Byelorussia, which was at that time a part of the U.S.S.R, but now a part of Republic of Belarus. Both his parents, Ivan Karpovich Alferov and Anna Vladimirovna, were of Byelorussian ancestry.

His father, Ivan Karpovich Alferov, was a member of the Bolshevik party. He retained his adherence to the communist principles all his life and imbibed them into his children. For his living, he worked as a factory manager and was posted in various cities. Later he became a director in the same farm.

Zhores’ mother Anna was a librarian and also headed a public organization for housewives. He also had an elder brother named Marx, who died in 1944, fighting in the Second World War. Young Zhores adored him very much and was much affected by his death.

After the war, Zhores entered the only boy's school in the destroyed city of Minsk and graduated from there in 1947. During this period, he was much influenced by his physics teacher, Yakov Borisovich Meltserson and developed interest in the subject under his influence.

On Meltserson’s advice, he next entered the Department of Electronics, Ul'yanov Electrotechnical Institute in Leningrad. Here he developed interest in research work and when he was in the third year, started working on semiconductors and vacuum processes; finally graduating from there with a BS degree in Electronics in December, 1952.

On January 30, 1953, Zhores Ivanovich Alferov joined Physico-Technical Institute, now known as Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute, as junior researcher. Working with a team of young researchers they created the first soviet p-n junction transistor on the 5th of March of the same year.

Slowly, their team began to expand. In a very short span, they created the first Soviet germanium power rectifiers. Concurrently, they continued to work with germanium photodiodes and silicon.

In May 1958, the team was asked to work out a special semiconductor device for the first Soviet atomic submarine. It meant that they would not only have to build another germanium power rectifier, but also have to develop new technology. By the month of October, they succeeded in their mission.

In 1959, the work earned him Order of the Badge of Honour. This was the first of many Sate Honours that he would later get.

In 1961, he earned his candidate degree of sciences in technology (equivalent to MS) from the same institute. His thesis involved working out the power germanium and partially silicon rectifiers. The work contributed to the development of Soviet power semiconductor electronics.

Zhores Ivanovich Alferov is best known for his advanced research into III-V semiconductor heterostructures. The work included detailed studies of epitaxy processes, injection properties, lasers, LED’s, and solar cells etc.

Alfred’s work in this respect provided the foundation for optical semiconductors and solar cells. It not only made the Soviet Union's Sputnik program possible, but also laid the foundation for the development of bar-code readers, cellular telephone communications etc.