Fatima Butaeva — a relative of Renat Besolov on the Butaev line, a physicist and co-author of the discovery of light amplification
A Soviet physicist, candidate of technical sciences and Stalin Prize laureate. Creator of the first Soviet fluorescent lamps and co-author of the discovery of the amplification of electromagnetic waves (1951 priority) — one of the origins of the laser.
Fluorescent lamps and the prehistory of the laser
Fatima Aslanbekovna Butaeva was born in 1907. After graduating from a pedagogical institute, she joined the All-Union Electrotechnical Institute, in the light-sources laboratory, where she worked under the physicist V. A. Fabrikant — rising from laboratory assistant to head of laboratory. In 1946 she defended her dissertation as a candidate of technical sciences.
Studying luminescence, Butaeva developed the first fluorescent lamps in the USSR — daylight lamps. In 1951, for this work, together with S. I. Vavilov, V. A. Fabrikant, V. L. Levshin and others, she was awarded the Stalin Prize.
Together with V. A. Fabrikant and M. M. Vudynsky she filed an application, with priority from 18 June 1951, on the phenomenon of amplification of electromagnetic waves. In 1964 they were granted Diploma of Scientific Discovery No. 12, “The phenomenon of amplification of electromagnetic waves (coherent radiation),” entered into the State Register of Scientific Discoveries of the USSR — one of the origins of the laser.
For more than 25 years Fatima Aslanbekovna headed the fluorescent-lamp laboratory at VNISI. She was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honour and the medal “For Labour Valour.” She died in 1992.
The Butaev family — maternal line
Fatima Butaeva was of the Ossetian Butaev family. Renat Besolov's great-great-grandmother, Varika Butaeva, came from the same family. Fatima Butaeva's biography is confirmed; the degrees of kinship are given per family records.