Laser inventor dies

Just one of Prokhorov's legacies

A leading Russian scientist who helped invent the laser has died, aged 85.

His name is linked to outstanding discoveries that in many ways defined 20th Century civilisation

Russian President Vladimir Putin

The death of Alexander Prokhorov is being described as the end of an era by colleagues and politicians, including President Putin.

Prokhorov won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1964, along with colleague Nikolai Basov and US citizen Charles Townes for work in the field of quantum electronics.

The scientific pioneer was a leading member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and won numerous state awards, despite a reputation for being fiercely independent.

Born in Australia in 1916, Mr Prokhorov came to the Soviet Union in 1923 with his family who were Communist sympathisers.

He fought in World War II before injury forced him to return home, where he returned to his studies.

Scientific breakthrough

He and Basov then went on to develop a similar device to Charles Townes' maser - a beam of coherent microwave radiation analogous to a laser. And their development in turn preceded the laser - which has found uses in such disparate fields as surgery and the production of the compact disc.

"Many believed that we had gone crazy, that it was impossible," he told Russian state television last year.

"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."

Alexander Prokhorov himself was renowned for his independent spirit. In his role of editor of the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia, the Soviet Union's major reference work, which he was appointed to in 1969, the scientist ignored orders to leave out dissident Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov from the volume.

He also refused a government invitation to become a deputy in the Soviet parliament.

Hand-written workings

"His name is linked to outstanding discoveries that in many ways defined 20th Century civilisation," President Vladimir Putin said in a statement.

Alexander Prokhorov died late on Tuesday in his apartment from pneumonia, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.

He worked until the end, his office littered with hand-written notes as he refused to use a computer. He claimed it would interfere with his thinking.

He will be buried in Moscow's Novodyevichy cemetery, the final resting place of many prominent Soviet and Russian scientists, writers and composers.