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Russian Nobel physics laureate Prokhorov dies
By Clara Ferreira-Marques
MOSCOW, Jan 8 (Reuters) - Russian Nobel laureate Alexander Prokhorov, an inventor of the laser technology that laid the groundwork for compact discs, modern surgery and other scientific advances, died on Tuesday. He was 85.
Interfax news agency said Prokhorov, known for his strong will and fiercely independent mind, died overnight of pneumonia.
Prokhorov won the Nobel prize for physics in 1964, along with compatriot Nikolai Basov and U.S. scientist Charles Townes, for developing the laser.
"Many believed that we had gone crazy, that it was impossible," he said in November 2001 archive footage shown on RTR state television.
"It was a very brave step, because before that no one had said it was possible to create a generator of optical range. Then it became a new, independent science -- optics."
The research institute he headed was also a key contributor to the Soviet programme to counter U.S. President Ronald Reagan's plans for a "Star Wars" defence system -- so called because it would destroy ballistic missiles in space.
But Prokhorov was anything but a conformist in an era when diversions from the accepted political line were rare.
After being appointed editor in 1969 of the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia, the Soviet Union's prime reference work, Prokhorov ignored orders to exclude dissident Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov from the volume.
He also refused a government invitation to become a deputy in the Soviet parliament.
"I said I do not want to be a deputy, because I am not a politician, I am a scientist," Prokhorov said in the archive footage marking his 85th birthday.
END OF AN ERA FOR RUSSIAN SCIENCE
Scientists and politicians said Prokhorov's passing marked the end of an era for Russian science.
"His name is linked to outstanding discoveries that in many ways defined 20th century civilisation," President Vladimir Putin said in a statement.
Zhores Alferov, Russian winner of the 2000 Nobel physics prize, said the death was "a bitter loss for world science."
"His independence allowed him to speak freely to the Soviet authorities," Yevgeny Dianov, head of the Fibre Optics Scientific Centre, told RTR.
Television footage showed Prokhorov's desk inundated with files, with his glasses still lying on a mound of paperwork.
The scientist had no computer, as he complained it would "interfere with his thinking," and preferred to record his notes on hundreds of scraps of paper still littering his office.
Born in Australia in 1916, Prokhorov came to the Soviet Union in 1923 with his family, communist sympathisers.
During World War Two he joined the Red Army, despite eligibility for exemption because of his academic research, and was twice wounded.
A leading member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Prokhorov was twice made a Hero of Socialist Labour -- the Soviet state's highest civilian award.
Prokhorov will be buried in Moscow's Novodyevichy cemetery, resting place of many prominent Soviet and Russian scientists, writers and composers.
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