Legacy to be proud of (continued): Russian contribution to the development of physics in the 20th and 21st centuries

My friends, since my recent article on prominent Russian scientists resonated with you so well, I decided to continue this practice of knowledge sharing.

Let’s proceed to the heroes of the 20th and even 21st century – the time of numerous discoveries. But since this brilliant age is full of inventions and on Friday we are hardly inclined to read enormous articles, I have decided to focus on the field of physics today.

We all know that the crocodile is featured in the logo of Lacoste, but what does the reptile have to do with physics? The answer is in a quote:

“The crocodile cannot turn its head. Like all science, it must always go forward with all-devouring jaws. Errors are many, truth is unique. The year that Rutherford died there disappeared forever the happy days of free scientific work which gave us such delight in our youth.” 

The crocodile was a nickname the great Russian scientist Pyotr Kapitsa gave to his great friend and scientist Ernest Rutherford, head of the Cavendish laboratory at the University of Cambridge were Kapitsa worked and made amazing discoveries. Being a man of many talents, Kapitsa is still the best known for discovering the phenomenon of superfluidity – the ability of liquid helium to flow without resistance at very low temperatures. The direct uses of superfluid helium are actually rather few, but there are other unique indirect applications of superfluidity, they are most useful in the development of theory and understanding high-temperature superconductivity. Find out more by clicking on Kapitsa's portrait.

It’s always challenging to find out how women in Russia and the Soviet Union contributed to physics, but I was able to trace a brilliant success story in this respect as well. And this is the story of Fatima Butaeva who is known as a co-inventor of the first fluorescent lamps. She was awarded the Stalin Prize for that in 1951. In the same year, Butaeva and her colleagues applied for a patent for a new principle for light amplification, which is today applied in all lasers. Butaeva personally ran almost all tedious experiments herself. Her discovery laid the foundation for quantum electronics and was revolutionary at the time.

Our next hero, Zhores Alferov, another Nobel prize winner for physics said, “If Russia is to be a great power, it will be, not because of its nuclear potential, faith in God or the president, or Western investment, but thanks to the labor of the nation, faith in knowledge and science and the maintenance and development of scientific potential and education”. Only a true patriot could have uttered such words. Zhores Alferov made a significant contribution in the world science: he was the one who dedicated his life to studying semiconductors. Some components use heterostructures, in which semiconductor materials lie in thin sheets. In 1963 Zhores Alferov built a heterostructure that acted as a laser. Semiconductor lasers have since become important for the transmission of signals in optical fibers and for storage and reading of data. I believe you can imagine how important it is today. 

Finally let’s move on to the wonderful duet of the so called “garbage scientists” – Russian-born Andre Geim and a Russian citizen Konstantin Novoselov. Why “garbage”? Novoselov’s quote explains it all.

“We had been trying several other methods in our lab. And there was a senior researcher who was preparing samples of graphite (bulk carbon samples) for the attempts. The way you clean graphite is just cover it with tape and pull the tape off, and then throw it away. So once, I just picked it up out of the trash and we analyzed it."

That’s how graphene – the material of the future - was discovered, isolated and characterized, for which both Geim and Novoselov got the Nobel prize in Physics in 2010. Graphene is considered to be the world's thinnest, strongest and most conductive material - of both electricity and heat, thus it has the potential to revolutionize entire industries - in the fields of electricity, conductivity, energy generation, batteries, sensors and more.

And again, these were just a couple of names worth mentioning but there are many more. I could talk about the Russian science much longer but next time I’d prefer to dwell on the greatest female scientists of all time to honor the International Women’s Day. What do you think of it? Meanwhile I’ll pass the floor to Aleksey who will cover a few more names. Check out his new post!