Nobel-winning physicist who laid the foundations of the maser and laser, then extended quantum electronics into missile defense
In 1985, responding to the US SDI program, Basov declared publicly that the Soviet Union was capable of matching any technology proposed. In the late Cold War technology race, the Nobel laureate's words were not merely a scientific opinion but an element of national strategy.
A Soviet radiophysicist and one of the founders of quantum electronics. In 1952, together with Alexander Prokhorov, he established the principle of amplifying and generating electromagnetic radiation with quantum systems, and in 1954 they built the first maser using an ammonia molecular beam. He went on to design the three-level laser, semiconductor lasers, and high-power gas and chemical lasers, and was the first to propose using lasers for controlled thermonuclear fusion. For this body of work he shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics with Prokhorov and Charles Townes. As Director of the Lebedev Physical Institute from 1973 to 1988, he led the institutional center of Soviet laser physics; his research fed directly into Soviet missile defense programs. In 1985 he publicly declared that the USSR was capable of matching the technology proposed by the US Strategic Defense Initiative.
Career Timeline
- 1941Drafted into Red Army, entered Kuibyshev Military Medical Academy
- 1943–1945Served as military doctor's assistant on the 1st Ukrainian Front
- 1945–1950Entered and graduated from Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (MEPhI)
- 1950–1953Postgraduate at Lebedev Physical Institute (FIAN); Candidate of Sciences degree
- 1956Doctor of Sciences with thesis 'A Molecular Oscillator'
- 1958–1972Deputy Director of the Lebedev Physical Institute
- 1959Awarded the Lenin Prize together with Prokhorov
- 1962Elected Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences
- 1963Founded and headed the Laboratory of Quantum Radiophysics at FIAN
- 1964Nobel Prize in Physics (jointly with Prokhorov and Townes)
- 1966Elected Full Member (Academician) of the USSR Academy of Sciences
- 1967–1990Member of the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences
- 1969First Hero of Socialist Labor title
- 1973–1988Director of the Lebedev Physical Institute
- 1974Deputy of the Soviet of the Union, USSR Supreme Soviet (9th–11th convocations)
- 1982Second Hero of Socialist Labor title
- 1989Awarded the USSR State Prize