Alexander K. Popov
About Optica
In Memoriam: Alexander K. Popov, 1941 - 2022
31 March 2022
Alexander K. Popov, Optica Fellow (2013) passed away on 31 March 2022 in Boca Raton, Florida at the age of 80. He was known for his pioneering work on nonlinear interference effects in atoms and novel parametric wave interactions in negative-index materials. Most notably, he founded and headed the Laboratory of Coherent and Nonlinear Optics at the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Science.
Popov studied physics at the Tomsk State University in Russia where he obtained a Master of Science degree in theoretical optics in 1963 under the guidance of Alexander P. Kazantsev who did seminal contributions to the field of laser interaction with atoms. In 1967, Popov obtained his PhD degree in Physics and Mathematics from the Kirensky Institute of Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. His PhD project “Nonlinear Theory of the Gas Laser” was completed to a large extent on his own, without a formal advisor.
Popov reported a number of seminal discoveries of various important phenomena in Doppler-broadened media interacting with strong electromagnetic fields. After these early studies, Popov conducted his postdoctoral research at the Novosibirsk Institute of Semiconductors, Novosibirsk Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences under the guidance of Russian scientist Sergey G. Rautian, one of the pioneers of nonlinear optical spectroscopy. Popov and Rautian’s collaborative work resulted in critical contributions to the field and served to a high degree as a precursor for later developed important fields of lasing without inversion and electromagnetically induced transparency.
In 1976, Popov obtained his second advanced degree of a doctor of sciences (similar to ‘habilitation’ in Germany). In the same 1976 he founded the Laboratory of Coherent Optics in the Kirensky Institute of Physics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Science. He left Russia in 2000 and joined the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point, as a research professor of physics. In 2008, he continued his work as a research professor at Purdue University until his retirement in 2018. In 2013, Optica named him a Fellow for his seminal contributions to nonlinear optics, including tailored transparency, lasing without inversion and foundations of nonlinear wave interactions in metamaterials. Popov authored more than 400 articles during his research career and wrote several books, including “Laser-Induced Resonances in Continuum” (1981), with Yu. I. Heller, and “The Introduction to Nonlinear Spectroscopy” (1983, Novosibirsk, Nauka), which was based on his course of lectures taught at the Krasnoyarsk State University.
He is survived by his wife Irina, and his two sons, Alexander and Ivan.
Optica and the scientific community mourn his loss.
