Table Of ContentLenin’s Laureate
Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology
Jed Z. Buchwald, general editor
Dolores L. Augustine, Red Prometheus: Engineering and Dictatorship in East Germany,
1945–1990
Lawrence Badash, A Nuclear Winter’s Tale: Science and Politics in the 1980s
Mordechai Feingold, editor, Jesuit Science and the Republic of Letters
Larrie D. Ferreiro, Ships and Science: The Birth of Naval Architecture in the Scientifi c
Revolution, 1600–1800
Sander Gliboff, H. G. Bronn, Ernst Haeckel, and the Origins of German Darwinism: A
Study in Translation and Transformation
Niccolò Guicciardini, Isaac Newton on Mathematical Certainty and Method
Kristine Harper, Weather by the Numbers: The Genesis of Modern Meteorology
Sungook Hong, Wireless: From Marconi’s Black-B ox to the Audion
Jeff Horn, The Path Not Taken: French Industrialization in the Age of Revolution,
1750–1830
Myles W. Jackson, Harmonious Triads: Physicists, Musicians, and Instrument Makers in
Nineteenth-C entury Germany
Myles W. Jackson, Spectrum of Belief: Joseph von Fraunhofer and the Craft of Precision
Optics
Mi Gyung Kim, Affi nity, That Elusive Dream: A Genealogy of the Chemical Revolution
Ursula Klein and Wolfgang Lefèvre, Materials in Eighteenth- Century Science: A Histori-
cal Ontology
John Krige, American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe
Janis Langins, Conserving the Enlightenment: French Military Engineering from Vauban
to the Revolution
Wolfgang Lefèvre, editor, Picturing Machines 1400–1700
Staffan Müller-W ille and Hans-J örg Rheinberger, editors, Heredity Produced: At the
Crossroads of Biology, Politics, and Culture, 1500–1870
William R. Newman and Anthony Grafton, editors, Secrets of Nature: Astrology and
Alchemy in Early Modern Europe
Gianna Pomata and Nancy G. Siraisi, editors, Historia: Empiricism and Erudition in
Early Modern Europe
Alan J. Rocke, Nationalizing Science: Adolphe Wurtz and the Battle for French Chemistry
George Saliba, Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance
Suman Seth, Crafting the Quantum: Arnold Sommerfeld and the Practice of Theory,
1890–1926
Nicolás Wey Gómez, The Tropics of Empire: Why Columbus Sailed South to the Indies
Paul R. Josephson, Lenin’s Laureate: Zhores Alferov’s Life in Communist Science
Lenin’s Laureate
Zhores Alferov’s Life in Communist Science
Paul R. Josephson
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2010 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any
electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information
storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information about quantity discounts, email [email protected].
Set in Stone Sans and Stone Serif by Graphic Composition, Inc. Printed and bound
in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data
Josephson, Paul R.
Lenin’s laureate : Zhores Alferov’s life in communist science / Paul R. Josephson.
p. cm. — (Transformations : studies in the history of science and technology)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-262-01458-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Alferov, Zh. I. 2. Physicists—
Russia (Federation)—Biography. 3. Physics—Russia (Federation)—History. 4. Science
and state—Russia (Federation)—History. I. Title.
QC16.A3417J67 2010
509.47'0904—dc22
2010005431
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Introduction 1
1 Childhood 15
2 Heroes and Hero Projects 57
3 Research and Reforms 109
4 From Transistors to Heterojunctions 153
5 Perestroika and Politics 177
6 Scholar, Laureate, and Statesman 215
Afterword and Acknowledgments 267
Notes 271
Index 301
Introduction
When you look at the lights on your alarm clock or stop at a traffi c signal,
more than likely you see light- emitting diodes in action. LEDs consume
80 or 90 percent less energy than incandescent lights, and they last years
longer. In addition to LEDs, in everyday life we encounter semiconductor
lasers, solar cells, and transistors in a variety of communications and en-
ergy electronics—for example, CD players and mobile phones. These items
refl ect the practical applications of the heterojunction, a kind of semicon-
ductor device that operates with very high effi ciency at room temperature.
The heterojunction was developed in the 1960s by a small number of phys-
icists working in various countries. One of them, Zhores Ivanovich Alferov,
shared the Nobel Prize in 2000 for his development of the heterojunction.
As of this writing, in 2010, the 80-y ear- old Alferov, based in St. Peters-
burg, remains active in research in the science of nanostructures and as a
university educator, simultaneously serving in the Russian Parliament as
a member of the Communist minority. Alferov believes that his role in the
Parliament is to use his authority as a Nobel laureate to save Russian science
and technology from further losses of funding, personnel, and research
capacity—that is, losses beyond those that occurred immediately after the
breakup of the Soviet Union. Alferov’s life and career illustrate the rise of
Soviet science and technology, the challenges that scientists endured in cre-
ating the largest research- and- development apparatus in the world, and the
diffi culties Russian scientists face today in securing funding for research.
By 1948, when he graduated from high school in Minsk with a gold
medal, Alferov had demonstrated many of the personality traits that are
essential to a career as a scientist. His teachers saw that he had a dedicated
and disciplined mind, mastered diffi cult concepts easily, had immediate re-
call of relevant literature, and was capable of penetrating analysis. Alferov
had not yet chosen a specifi c fi eld of research, but he had a strong interest
in electronics.
2 Introduction
After World War II, under Joseph Stalin, the USSR engaged in a massive
rebuilding program in which electrifi cation was a central aspect. Alferov,
like many other students, played a small part in that program, serving dur-
ing his sophomore year in a brigade whose mission was to design and to
build—largely by hand—the tiny Krasnoborsk hydroelectric power station
in Leningrad province, which was to provide power for local industry. He
then won a research prize that entitled him to visit any one of Stalin’s
“hero projects.” He chose the Tsimliansk Dam on the Don River, whose
huge size confi rmed for him the glories of communist construction. These
experiences convinced him to enter graduate school in the hope of making
a personal contribution to the USSR’s electrifi cation programs.
After receiving a BS degree at the Leningrad Electrical Technical Insti-
tute, Alferov considered a wide range of fi rst- rate institutes for his graduate
work. Since 1917, when they had seized power, the Bolsheviks had under-
written the establishment of dozens of physics, chemistry, metallurgical,
biological, and other institutes. The Cold War brought another burst of ac-
tivity as new institutions, many of them connected with nuclear weapons
research, were created. The nuclear enterprise attracted some of the best
students; others were simply ordered to enlist in the closed, secret facilities.
Alferov was determined to stick to electronics. He found a home and a ca-
reer at the foremost center for research in solid state physics, the Leningrad
Physical Technical Institute, which he entered at the beginning of 1953,
shortly before Stalin’s death. There, in the 1960s, he completed studies on
heterostructures of gallium arsenide, later becoming director of the labora-
tory and then of the institute.
Many of the stories of the personalities of modern science focus exclu-
sively on genius as the source of inspiration. What forces shape modern
science? The qualities of the individual researcher (Alferov possessed math-
ematical aptitude, the ability to synthesize, and originality) enable a young
scholar to embark on a career in physics, chemistry, biology, or mathemat-
ics. We commonly believe that the individual scientist, stimulated by col-
leagues or more generally by developments in a fi eld of research yet also
inspired by some internal logic or insight, is the prime engine of scientifi c
discovery. Alferov surely shared many of these characteristics.
Yet by the early years of the twentieth century science had become “big
science”—the science of research institutes, expensive apparatuses, and ex-
tensive government support. Such leading industrial companies as General
Electric, DuPont, Westinghouse, and I.G. Farben had established laborato-
ries in support of their business activities.1 At universities, scientists, driven
by the increasing costs of research and by diffi culties they encountered in
Introduction 3
attacking the conundrums of modern science alone, successfully lobbied
their governments and such newly established philanthropies as the Rock-
efeller Foundation for supplementary budgets, and began to work collabo-
ratively in larger and larger teams. 2 Theoretical scientists were not immune
from the need for team research using expensive equipment, but came to
work closely with experimentalists who used such devices as particle ac-
celerators and reactors to study subatomic processes and verify theoretical
advances. In Alferov’s fi eld of research, these included devices for molecu-
lar beam epitaxy and metalorganic chemical vapor disposition developed
in the 1960s and the 1970s.
The modern state played an important role in fi nancing and shaping
science. By the end of World War I, policy makers had recognized the need
to support researchers to improve the increasingly industrial nature of
military performance. By the end of World War II, with the big projects
of rocketry, radar, and atomic weaponry, they recognized the necessity of
assembling huge collectives of researchers in national laboratories, uni-
versities, and industrial facilities, and not only for national security but
also for public health, economic stability, and even simply for the sake of
science. 3 These national laboratories—Los Alamos, Argonne, Brookhaven,
and Oak Ridge in the United States; the various Max Planck (formerly Kai-
ser Wilhelm) institutes in Germany; Arzamas-1 6, the Kurchatov Institute
for Atomic Energy, and the Leningrad Physical Technical Institute in the
former Soviet Union; and many others—remain icons of scientifi c excel-
lence and state power.
Perhaps nowhere was government support so critical to the develop-
ment of modern science as it was in the USSR. In 1917, on the eve of the
Revolution, Russia was a kind of scientifi c colony of Europe. Its scien-
tists frequently traveled to Germany and France to undertake research in
modern laboratories and to complete their doctorates. The tsarist govern-
ment had a narrow understanding of science’s contribution to national
well-b eing. Russian laboratories were poorly equipped for lack of support,
and government bureaucrats often interfered in the hiring and fi ring of re-
searchers on the basis of politics. The vast majority of the empire’s citizens
were illiterate, living on the edge of agricultural failure in a countryside far
removed from urban, industrial lifestyles. A few philanthropies had been
established, but they were relatively small and they focused most of their
activities on areas other than science.
Upon seizing power in October of 1917, the Bolsheviks set out to create
socialist institutions in the economy, in the educational system, in the arts,
and in the sciences. Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Nikolai Bukharin, and
