Reading practice

25 Прочитайте текст 4а и переведите его.

Text 4A

ZHORES I. ALFEROV

Zhores Ivanovich Alferov was born in Vitebsk, Belorussia, on March 15, 1930. His father was director of a trust, mother headed a public organization of housewives and worked as librarian. As a result of being so-called “director’s boys”, Zhores and his elder brother Marx tried to behave themselves and to act in the way that people thought was correct and proper both at school and in public.

Learning was easy to Zhores, and dependable defender, his brother Marx, made his existence cloudless at school and outdoors as well. Marx had graduated high school on June 21, 1941 (the next day the Nazi invasion started) and shortly after that the family left for the Urals to Turinsk as his father had been assigned there to a post of director of a newly-built factory.

In the post-war situation Zhores attended an only boy’s school in the destroyed Minsk-city, and was lucky in having an excellent physics teacher there Yakov Borisovich Melterson. When finishing the school Zhores took his teacher’s advice which institution to choose for education and that was a celebrated Ulyanov Electrotechnical Institute in Leningrad (LETI). Theoretical courses of studies were easy enough for Alferov. It was the laboratory research that attracted him. Being a third – year student, he began to work in a laboratory of vacuum processes. His first investigations were directed by a research associate N.N. Sozina who studied semiconductor photodetectors. Since that time semiconductors have become main objects of Alferov’s scientific interests. His graduation thesis was devoted to the problem of obtaining the thin films and investigating the photoconductivity of bismuth telluride compounds¹⁾.

In December 1952 Zhores Alferov graduated from the Institute and was offered by his supervisor N.N. Sozina to stay in the LETI to continue his study. But Alferov dreamed of working at the Physico-Technical Institute that had been founded by Abram Fedorovich Joffe. His book “Fundamentals of Modern Physics” was a manual for Zhores. Happily, three vacancies for graduates had been given by Joffe’s Institute. One of them fell to Alferov’s lot. His joy was boundless. And may be it is this lucky distribution that has determined his happy scientific career.

Alferov’s new supervisor was V.M. Tuchkevich, head of subdivision. The director of the Institute understood the importance of drawing the interests of young people to science. They comprised a team of very young researchers. It was a very big team: creation of transistor on p-n junctions. The main thing was everyday experimental work in the laboratory. Under the guidance of V.M. Tuchkevich they succeeded in working out principles of the technology and the metric of transistor electronics²⁾. And as early as in May 1953, the first Soviet transistor receivers were shown to the “top authorities”. That work exerted a great influence upon Zh. Alferov. While quickly and effectively progressing as a scientist, he began to comprehend the significances of the technology not only for electronic devices, but in basic research work too.

Since 1962 Zhores Ivanovich Alferov has been working in the area of III–V semiconductor heterostructures. His outstanding contributions to physics and technology of III–V semiconductor heterostructures, especially investigations of injection properties, development of lasers, solar cells have led to the creation of modern heterostructure physics and electronics. In 1973 Zn.I.Alferov took over chair of optoelectronics at the St. Petersburg State Electrotechnical. Petersburg and in 1988 he appointed the Dean of the Faculty of Physics and Technology at the St. Petersburg State Electrotechnical University and in 1988 he was appointed to Dean of the Faculty of Physics and Technology at the St. Petersburg Technical University. For his reseach Professor Zh. I. Alferov was awarded a number of national and international prizes. In 2000 Zh. I. Alferov received the Nobel Prize in physics. For his reseach Professor Zh. I. Alferov was awarded a number of national and international prizes. In 2000 Zh. I. Alferov received the Nobel Prize in physics.

In his life Alferov has been folloving the principle: “One should make efforts and search for. And having ottained whatever the purpose, to make efforts again.

Zh. I. Alferov is an author of 4 books, 400 articles, and 50 inventions on semiconductor technology.