Prokhorov, Alexander Mikhailovich, << `praw` kuh RAWF, ah lyih KSAN dur myih KY luh vyihch >> (1916-2002), was a Russian physicist. In 1953, he and Russian physicist Nikolai Basov stated principles for using the energy of molecules to amplify microwaves. They developed these amplifiers, called masers, during the next two years (see Maser ). For their work, Prokhorov and Basov shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in physics with the American physicist Charles H. Townes.
Prokhorov was born in Atherton, Australia, on July 11, 1916. In 1946, he became a research physicist at the Lebedev Institute of Physics in Moscow. In 1973, he became head of the Institute of General Physics of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow. He died on Jan. 8, 2002.
