Oral History: Vladimir Fridkin (2015)

Professor Vladimir Mikhailovich Fridkin was born on November 23, 1929, in Moscow. In 1952 he graduated with distinction from the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University. In 1955, A.V. Shubnikov and A.S. Zheludev invited Fridkin to study as a postgraduate student at the Institute of Crystallography of the USSR Academy of Sciences. His entire life, since September 1955, has been connected with the Institute of Crystallography. In 1958 Fridkin defended his Candidate dissertation on electrophotography, and in 1964 he defended his Doctoral dissertation on the physics of photoelectrets; both studies were done at the Institute of Crystallography. Fridkin has published more than 300 papers and directed 70 Candidate of Science students and five Doctoral students. His main scientific interests include the electric and optical properties of nonlinear crystals and nonlinear and photorefractive optics. However, Fridkin believes that one of his greatest achievements was the first design of a dry photocopy machine in the world in 1953. He called it an electrophotographic apparatus, but it is known today as Xerox. He received the Kozar Medal of the American Photographic Society and the Berg International Prize for this accomplishment. He was a visiting professor at the University of Trento (Italy) and the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. He has published seven scientific monographs and ten literary books.

This interview describes Fridkin's early life and education. He discusses his difficulties in obtaining employment as a Jew in Stalinist Russia and how, in a small factory, he discovered the principles of electrophotography and built the world's first Xerox. He considers that his four greatest contributions to science were in the fields of photoferroelectric phenomena, phase transitions (tricritical point), the bulk photoelectric effect, and ferroelectricity at the nanoscale. He talks about the difficulties of travel during the Cold War. He concludes with a description of his literary works and one of his published stories.