Aleksandr Mikhailovich Prokhorov was born in 1916, in Atherton, Australia. His parents Mikhail and Mariya, had fled from Siberia to Australia in 1911 because of Mikhail's involvement in revolutionary activities. The family returned to the Soviet Union in 1923, but Alekxandr's graduate studies were interrupted by World War II. He was eventually awarded a Ph.D. in physical and mathematical sciences for his research on the radiation produced by electrons in the high-energy orbits of the synchrotron, a circular particle accelerator that uses electrical and magnetic fields to propel the components of atoms to extremely high speeds.

Prokhorov and and Nikolai G. Basov became involved in the stimulated emission of radiation from gas molecules. Three decades earlier in 1917, Albert Einstein had studied the effects of radiation on atoms. Using quantum mechanics, Einstein confirmed earlier hypotheses that electrons in an atom tend to absorb small amounts of energy and jump to higher...