Alexander Mikhailovich Prokhorov was an Australian born Russian physicist. He was known as a pioneer in the field of quantum electronics.
Background
Aleksandr Prokhorov was born on June 28, 1916 in Atherton, Australia. He was the son of Mikhail Ivanovich Prokhorov and Mariya Ivanovna Prokhorova.
Prohorov's parents had fled from Siberia to Australia in 1911 because of Mikhail’s involvement in revolutionary activities. The family returned to the Soviet Union in 1923.
Education
Prokhorov entered Leningrad State University (now Saint Petersburg State University), receiving his baccalaureate degree in 1939. Prokhorov embarked on his graduate studies at the P.N. Lebedev Institute of Physics of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow.
After the World War II, he completed his research for the candidate's degree (comparable to a master’s degree) with a thesis on nonlinear oscillators. In 1951 he was awarded Doctor of Philosophy degree in physical and mathematical sciences for his research on the radiation produced by electrons in the high-energy orbits of the synchrotron, a circular particle accelerator that uses electrical and magnetic fields to propel the components of atoms to extremely high speeds.
Prokhorov began his scientific career by studying radio wave propagation. His application of these studies to the theoretical design of a molecular generator and amplifier in 1952 formed the basis for the invention of both masers and lasers.
Prokhorov's scientific research dealt with the propagation of radio waves and their use in studying the upper atmosphere of earth. In June 1941 the German invasion of Russia interrupted his studies and he was called to military service. Prokhorov was wounded in battle twice before being discharged in 1944.
Prokhorov served as an assistant director of the Oscillation Laboratory at the Lebedev Institute. He continued his research on the uses of radar and radio waves and applied them to the study of molecular structure and properties. In connection with this work, he came into contact with Nikolai G. Basov, with whom he was to collaborate on some of his most important work.
Prokhorov and Basov soon became involved in the stimulated emission of radiation from gas molecules. Three decades earlier in 1917, Albert Einstein had studied the effects of radiation on atoms. Using quantum mechanics, Einstein confirmed earlier hypotheses that electrons in an atom tend to absorb small amounts of energy and jump to higher energy levels in the atom. They then re-emit the absorbed radiation and return to lower, less energetic orbitals. But Einstein also discovered that in some instances an electron in a higher energy level can, simply by virtue of being exposed to radiation, jump to a lower energy level and emit a photon of a wavelength identical to that of the external radiation. This process became known as stimulated emission.
Prokhorov and Basov saw in Einstein’s analysis a way of using molecules to amplify the energy of a given beam of radiation. Radiation could be used to stimulate the emission of more photons of the same wavelength within an atom, creating a domino effect among other atoms, thus stimulating the emission of Wore photons. This cascade of energy emission could result in a mechanism for generating more and more intense beams of radiation with a very narrow range of wavelengths. Later researchers used these findings to develop masers (microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) and lasers (light amplification by stimulated emissions of radiation).
Prokhorov and Basov announced the discovery of their molecular generator in a paper read before the All-Union Conference on Radio Spectroscopy in May, 1952. However, they did not publish their results for more than two years, by which time the American physicist Charles H. Townes had built a working maser and published his conclusions in Physical Review. The discovery of the molecular generator provided the theoretical basis for the development of both masers and lasers, on which Prokhorov has concentrated his research efforts since the mid-1950s.
During his career, Prokhorov held various positions - he was appointed professor at Moscow State University in 1959 and eventually returned to the Lebedev Institute, where he was appointed deputy director in 1972. He was also editor-in-chief of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia since 1969.
Prokhorov became a member of the Communist Party in 1950.
Membership
Prokhorov was a member of Academy of Arts and Sciences of the Americas, Russian Academy of Sciences (formerly Soviet Academy of Sciences), as well as a chair of National Commission of Soviet Physicists.
Optical Society
2001
Soviet Academy of Sciences (now Russian Academy of Sciences)
1960
Soviet Academy of Sciences (now Russian Academy of Sciences)
1966
Connections
In 1941 Prokhorov married Galina Alekseyevna Shelepina, with whom he had one son, Kiril.