Portrait of Zhores Alferov

Birthday profile

Zhores Alferov

Zhores Alferov, Belarusian-Russian physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2019)

Born
March 15, 1930
Died
March 1, 2019
Zodiac sign
Pisces
Birth year
1930

About Zhores Alferov

Zhores Ivanovich Alferov (15 March 1930 – 1 March 2019) was a Russian applied physicist who contributed significantly to the creation of modern heterostructure physics and electronics. In 2000, Alferov shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for the development of the semiconductor heterojunction for optoelectronics. He also became a politician in his later life, serving in the State Duma as a member of the Communist Party from 1999. == Biography == Zhores Ivanovich Alferov was born on 15 March 1930 in Vitebsk, Byelorussian SSR (now Belarus), the son of Ivan Karpovich Alferov and Anna Vladimirovna. In 1952, Alferov graduated from the Department of Electronics at V. I. Ulyanov Electrotechnical Institute (now Saint Petersburg Electrotechnical University). The following year, he joined the staff of the Ioffe Institute, becoming its director in 1987. He obtained his Candidate of Sciences in Technology in 1961, and his Doctor of Sciences in Physics and Mathematics in 1970, both from the Ioffe Institute. Alferov was elected a Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union in 1972, and a full member in 1979. In 1973, he was appointed to the Chair of Optoelectronics at the Electrotechnical Institute, and became Dean of the Faculty of Physics and Technology at the Kalinin Politechnical Institute (now Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University) in 1988.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Career and life highlights

Zhores Alferov timeline

  1. In 1966, Alferov's lab created the first lasers based on heterostructures, although they did not lase continuously.
  2. Alferov worked with a group led by Vladimir Tuchkevich, who became director of the Ioffe Institute in 1967, on planar semiconductor amplifiers for use in radio receivers.
  3. Then in 1968, Alferov and coworkers produced the first continuous-wave semiconductor heterojunction laser operating at room temperature.
  4. In 1997 Alferov founded the Research and Education Center at the Ioffe Institute and in 2002, this center officially became the Saint Petersburg Academic University after gaining a charter to award masters and PhD degrees.
  5. In 2000, Alferov shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for the development of the semiconductor heterojunction for optoelectronics.

The world when Zhores Alferov was born

Zhores Alferov was born in 1930. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1930

  • #1 song"Georgia on My Mind" – Hoagy Carmichael
  • Top movieAll Quiet on the Western Front
  • Best-selling bookCimarron – Edna Ferber

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentBobby Jones wins the Grand Slam of golf
  • Top headlineFirst FIFA World Cup held in Uruguay
  • Technology milestonePlanet Pluto discovered
  • Defining fadMiniature golf craze
  • Notable inventionScotch tape
  • World population2.07 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderHerbert Hoover
  • Sports championPhiladelphia Athletics (World Series)
  • U.S. population123.2M

1930 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Zhores Alferov's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19302026
Gas$0.20$3.45/gal
Average home$6,000$435,000
Average income$3,500$67,500
Movie ticket$0.25$11.95
Postage stamp$0.02$0.73
Population123.2M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.