Being a Physicist

Before we talk about the work you wound up doing, let's talk a little about science. What do you think it takes to do science well? Is it a matter of temperament? It obviously is a matter of training, but temperament also?

If you are speaking about Russia just after World War II, physics became very popular because it was a time when we started our atomic project, and to get to study in physics, electronic departments, there was great competition. But interest in science depends on -- of course, on temperament, on ability, and what I said before, it [comes from] a very strong influence of teacher, family. So, it frequently happens that in scientific family the sons became scientists too.

But in my opinion, there is strong influence from the school. The school in general, very important one, and in Russia, in my opinion, there was long, good tradition in school teaching.

In the teaching, obviously you have to learn math, you have to learn what science has achieved thus far, but does a great teacher help you identify the problems that you're going to work on?

I'm in principle a very emotional guy. And the interest in electronics, I was just emotionally excited by the lectures of my teacher about the problems of electron beams, and so on, and how they interact. But later, of course, it became very important how you study at the university. I got very good -- I participated in scientific conferences in the institute at the second year of my study.

One of the associated professors in our institute, Natalia Nikolai Nosoizina, noticed and invited me to work in her laboratory. So, I started to work in the laboratory in the third year of my study at the institute, and she was getting out research in semiconductor physics and devices. At that time, semiconductor physics and technology -- it was just very seldom you find out these kinds of things at the universities and the research laboratories. So, I was also very [lucky] -- it was a crap-shoot that I had a very good teacher at school and very nice. She was sufficiently young and very kind. I could not say that she was, or she became, a very outstanding scientist, but she had some peculiar things in her character which attracted young researchers. And she always helped.

We just worked together, but when I graduated from the Electrotechnical Institute, she hoped that I would stay at the institute and [continue] working together with her. But I came to know much earlier about the Ioffe Institute as the best research institute in physics, and especially in semiconductor physics, in our country. So, I said no, I'd like to go to the Ioffe Institute, and fortunately, I was accepted at the Ioffe Institute in January of 1953, so I have been working there from that time. I didn't change my place of the work during all my life!

So, it sounds like inspiration is important.

Definitely.

Hard work is important.

In my opinion, in general, independent from your abilities, maybe you are a genius or just a first-class guy, but you can achieve real important results only where other things do not exist for you. So, you're just so deeply involved in the research that you forget about other things.

For instance, I lived in Leningrad, that time it was Leningrad, sufficiently far from the institute. I was a bachelor, my parents were in Byelorussia, and they lived sufficiently far from the institute. I decided, why I must spend one half-hour by train to go to the institute? I brought to the institute a blanket, some other things, and slept there, and wake up and started to work.

Sometimes it happened funny things, because sometimes I was awakened by a technician who came a little bit later. And at that time, we had as head of the institute very strong discipline. We must put special things on the desks that you came to work on time. I was in the institute, I never left, but I was awakened later and then I must try to explain why I was late to the job, to the work, to work at the institute! So, then I thought, okay, I can do it in the late evening. So, when I told to other my co-workers in the laboratory, they asked, do it for us too. So, our laboratory became the most disciplined laboratory in the institute!

So, what you're saying is, once you get hold of a problem, you give everything to it in terms of time, energy, and your mind.

Yes, definitely. In my opinion, it's just impossible -- because look, if you just look at the history of science and physics, the most important results have been achieved at a sufficiently young age. For theoreticians it's just the age between twenty-five and thirty, for experimentalists a little bit later because they need some experience to do experiments, and so on, but it's also between thirty and forty, between thirty and thirty-five. The most important discovery which I did at the age of thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-six, like that.

But you can do that only when, in my opinion, other things do not exist for you. You must be so involved because the real science and real scientific discovery is a hard job, hard work. To go to the new things, to the principally new things, is not very simple, because practically the real new things, at the beginning, many of your co-workers do not believe that it would be possible. Then later it became trivial!

When I started my research in the semiconductor heterostructures with the goal of creation of new type of lasers and with absolutely new properties, many people did not believe me. I did not have any kind of support inside because -- [even though] Ioffe Institute is a special place. So, for instance, my chief of the laboratory, he looks at [my work]: "Oh, heterostructures, it's nothing."

This was your boss?

My boss. But the deputy director of the institute, Professor Gayev, he helped me a lot, a lot. When it appears some kind of new amount of money, he helped me to buy new equipment, or for instance, I needed to have more space, he gave to me one room more, like that. I asked him, "Why? Why are you doing that?," a little bit later, when it was really successful work in heterostructures. And he gave me answer. He said, "You know Zhores, I understand nothing of your heterostructures, but I know what you did before. From this point of view, I understand if you're so deeply involved in that, it must be good."

So, he was a gambler. He was willing to gamble on you.

No, he was a person who spent all his life at the Ioffe Institute, he was a friend of many outstanding scientists, he was in very good friendship with Academician Alexander, of course, President of our Academy of Sciences, with Academician Constantinov who was Director of our institute. So, he knew well. He was real scientist, and he knew well that he can understand the abilities of the people.

So, it sounds, as you describe this, that what is also involved in being a great scientist is courage, because you were going places where other people had pointed the direction but no one had quite gone there before.

Yes, definitely. But also, I was in a very good atmosphere. For instance, it was very important in my scientific area that I deliver a talk at the International Luminescence Conference in 1969, in Delaware State, in your Delaware here. It was my first trip to the United States, and they were bringing a delegation for this conference. I was included in this delegation, I was sufficiently young at that time, but then, due to shortage of money, the Academy of Science decided to not to send the delegation under the expenses of the Academy but what we call "scientific tourism." So, you just pay yourself for transportation for some stay here. It was sufficiently cheap; nevertheless, as a scientific tourist, two weeks' trip to the U.S., participation in the conference, and to visit a few other scientific places, cost 700 rubles, at that time $1000, like that. But my salary was 400 rubles per month, and for me it was too big an amount. I decided it would be impossible. I had a family -- I just recently before that married.

Our former director, Academician Constantinov, who was vice president of the academy at that time, had just been in the hospital because he had a heart problem. He came for a couple days to the institute and invited me and told me, "Zhores, your research in heterostructures is very good. It's excellent. The international community must know about that. So, do not refuse to go to the U.S. I will be looking to find some money in order to pay, for instance, for the flight. But do it." "Yes," I said, "okay," and it was really very important, because after my talk at the conference, I was invited by Bell, by IBM -- it was a talk that [generated] a lot of results for which I got later the Nobel Prize.

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