Igor Grekhov
Igor Vsevolodovich Grekhov (, born 10 September 1934 in Smolensk) is a Soviet and Russian physicist and electrical engineer, full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is known as one of the founders of the power semiconductor device industry in the Soviet Union. His contributions to the field of pulsed power devices and converter technique were recognized by the awarding of the Lenin Prize, the two State Prizes and several State orders of Russia. He headed the laboratory at the Ioffe Physical Technical Institute in St. Petersburg over several decades. Professional career. Grekhov was born to a  family of schoolteachers in Smolensk, but his childhood passed in the city of Simferopol, Crimea. After finishing secondary school, Grekhov studied electrical engineering at the Bauman Moscow State Technical University. Then he spent several years (1958—1962) in industry, working as a research engineer and head of the laboratory at the “Electrovipryamitel” factory in Saransk (Mordovia, USSR). In 1962, Grekhov joined the Ioffe Institute in Leningrad and has since been an employee of the Institute for more than half-century, sequentially occupying the positions of a junior, ordinary and senior scientist, a group head and a research-sector head. In 1967  and 1975, he earned, respectively, the Ph.D. and Doktor nauk degrees, both in the physics of semiconductors. In 1982—2019, Grekhov headed the Power electronics laboratory. In the period from 2004 to 2014, he also served as a head of the Solid-State Electronics Department of the Institute. Along with his research activity, he taught a course in Semiconductor devices as a professor of St. Petersburg Polytechnic University (1984—1994). In 1991 Grekhov was elected to corresponding membership in the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and in 2008 up-ranked to full member in the Russian Academy of Sciences. Major achievements . Grekhov’s research work always concentrated on the physics of solid-state devices, with a special point related to their application in power electronics. His interests cover all the steps from background theoretical studies through a trial sample fabrication up to coordination of mass production of power devices including converters. His pioneering contributions in 1960s and 1970s provided a technological breakthrough for the semiconductor industry and gave birth to its new branch – power semiconductor device engineering – in the Soviet Union. The most important results are: The research in Grekhov’s laboratory includes also some other problems of the semiconductor device  physics: tunneling phenomena in MIS-structures, ferroelectric memories, porous silicon and superconductive ceramics. Representative publications. Totally, Grekhov has co-authorized four books, about 200 patents and more than 600 scientific papers.