Nikolai Basov

Born Dec. 14, 1922, in Voronezh. Soviet physicist; one of the founders of quantum radiophysics. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1966); member of the presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1967); Hero of Socialist Labor (1969). Member of the CPSU since 1951. Graduated from the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute in 1950.

From 1950, Basov worked in the Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR; from 1958 he was deputy director; and from 1962 he was head of the laboratory. He has been a professor at the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute since 1963, and he became editor in chief of the journal Priroda (Nature) in 1967. Together with A. M. Prokhorov, Basov developed a fundamentally new method of generating electromagnetic oscillations by means of quantum systems and created the first molecular generator (maser) using a beam of ammonia molecules. He introduced the idea of using semiconductors for quantum optical-band generators (lasers) and developed methods of creating various types of semiconductor lasers. Basov has done considerable work on the theory of powerful pulsed ruby and neodymium-glass lasers, on the creation of quantum frequency standards, and on the interaction of powerful radiation with matter. He was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1959 and the Nobel Prize in 1964. He received the Order of Lenin and was made an honorary member of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin in 1967.