Published: 11 June, 2009, 10:52
Edited: 11 June, 2009, 10:52
The laser was a scientific breakthrough in the 20th century that has shaped the modern world, and two Russian scientists were behind the important discovery, winning the Nobel Prize for their work.
Everything from DVD players in our computers to barcode scanners that speed up the whole business of shopping for our everyday groceries, complex security systems that enable our fingerprints to be our passwords for identification and even surgical equipment to keep your pearly whites looking pearly white – lasers are an integral part of today’s world. And two of the greatest pioneers of this breakthrough of technology were the Russian scientists Aleksandr Prokhorov and Nikolay Basov.
In 1964, Prokhorov and Basov won the Nobel Prize for their work in designing the modern laser. Even today many leading scientists regard this as one of the pre-eminent achievements of the twentieth century.
Basov and Prokhorov: quantum electronics pioneers
The Head of the Quantum Radiophysics Department from the Lebedev Institute Oleg Krokhin is fully adamant in his praise of the two men:
“I must say that the prize won by Prokhorov and Basov is one of the most important achievements of the past century. Out of a hundred Nobel Prizes awarded, their prize can be ranked among the top ten, because when speaking of scientific achievements of the past century, the quantum radiophysics relating to their work is ranked as one of the best.”
The pair worked at Moscow's Lebedev Institute throughout the 1950s looking at ways of exciting and controlling microwaves, creating a maser that used a pulsing energy source. The same principle would be crucial to making functional lasers.
In 1958 they began to explore laser technology and two years later the first laser was built. The pair were driven men who literally never really put their work to bed.
“I witnessed the birth of ideas. He worked really hard, sometimes it would be at his desk, in puffs of smoke, sometimes he would jump up in bed in the middle of the night, jot something down, something that he saw in his dream, apparently! Sometimes ideas would come to him from the most unlikely places,” says Lydia Basova, the legendary physicist’s widow.
Both Basov and Prokhorov spent the later years of their career working with the Soviet Army – producing weapons and targeting devices that would become ubiquitous in modern warfare. Today the technology they invented is all around us – from heavy manufacturing such as car production to keyhole surgeries that can remove gallstones and tumours without large invasive procedures.
“The laser is a unique thing, so naturally it is used in high-tech areas. There is no other way to work on the nanoscale, for example, other than with a laser beam, because it is an instrument that allows us to process nano objects. It is used to disperse particles in scientific research. There is a saying – ‘If you are doing something and can't get it done, it means you need a laser’,” says Sergey Gorny, Director of the Moscow Laser Centre.
They are even used to create interactive 3-D maps that help architects redesign tomorrow's world. They are two men who have changed the very way we live our lives.
Prokhorov and Basov enjoyed long and distinguished careers with high points across many disciplines of science and technological discovery, but it is for their pioneering work in helping to discover the laser that science and the world at large will remain forever grateful for.