STOCKHOLM, Sweden-Russia’s Academician and Communist lawmaker Zhores Alferov from the Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia, was announced a winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
He will share the prize worth about US$1 million with Americans Herbert Kroemer and Jack Kilby.
Alferov and German-born Kroemer, from the University of California at Santa Barbara, will share half the prize for their work in developing semiconductors used in computer technologies of satellite communications and cellular phones.
“Without Alferov, it would not be possible to transfer all the information from satellites down to the Earth or to have so many telephone lines between the cities,” said Hermann Grimmeiss, member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Kilby of Texas Instruments won the award for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit.
Alferov, 70, who is also vice president of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a member of the State Duma committee on education and science, is the first Russian to win a Nobel Prize since Mikhail Gorbachev won the peace prize in 1990.
Before the March presidential elections, Communist contender Gennady Zyuganov nominated Alferov to his would-be cabinet in charge of socio-political matters.
