Meet Alexander Prokhorov: the Australian-born co-inventor of the laser and Nobel Prize winner

While he is a celebrated scientific hero in Russia, his formative years were actually spent in far north Queensland. In the year of what would have been his 100th birthday, Australian scientists want us to know all about him, celebrate him and even recognise him with a stamp in his honour.

Professor Prokhorov's family fled to Australia as refugees from Tsarist Russia in 1912, eventually settling in what was known as "little Siberia" — a Russian colony in the Atherton Tablelands. On July 11, 1916, Alexander Prokhorov was born in Butcher's Creek, where he spent the first six years of his life.