Peter Sorokin

Peter Pitirimovich Sorokin
Born	Template:Birth date Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	September 24, 2015(2015-09-24) (aged 84)
Occupation	Physicist
Known for	Co-developer of the dye laser

Peter Pitirimovich Sorokin (, born 10 July 1931, died 24 September 2015) was a physicist of Russian-American heritage and a co-developer of the dye laser. He was born in Boston and grew up in Winchester, Massachusetts. Sorokin completed his undergraduate studies in 1952 and earned a doctorate in Applied Physics in 1958 at Harvard University, where he studied under Nicolaas Bloembergen.

The son of Russian sociologist Pitirim Sorokin and microbiologist Dr. Elena Baratynskaya, who hailed from Russian nobility, Sorokin began his professional career at IBM in 1958. While at IBM Research Laboratories, together with J. R. Lankard, he utilized a ruby laser to stimulate a near-infrared laser dye, thereby advancing dye laser technology alongside peers such as F. P. Schäfer.

Sorokin's work earned him numerous prestigious awards: the Albert A. Michelson Medal from the Franklin Institute in 1974, the National Academy of Sciences’ Comstock Prize in Physics in 1983, the Harvey Prize awarded by Israel's Technion in 1984, and he was the first recipient of the Arthur L. Schawlow Prize in Laser Science from the American Physical Society in 1991. He was honored as an IBM Fellow in 1968 and held fellowship status with the Optical Society of America.

In his later years, Sorokin developed a keen interest in astronomy. He died at age 84 on 24 September 2015 following injuries sustained from a fall.