Valentin Gapontsev — billionaire (ipg photonics) with roots in the USSR
Valentin Gapontsev (1939–2021) was a Russian-American physicist and the founder of IPG Photonics, a maker of high-power fibre lasers. According to Forbes, the company controlled 80% of the high-power fibre laser market in 2011; it listed on Nasdaq in 2006.
Tracing the roots — Moscow (Russia)
Born on 23 February 1939 in Moscow (USSR), Gapontsev graduated from Lviv Polytechnic in 1961, did doctoral studies at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and from 1967 worked at the USSR Academy of Sciences Institute of Radio-engineering and Electronics. He founded IPG in Russia in 1990 as a laboratory near Moscow; the company later opened its first manufacturing facility in Burbach, Germany, and is headquartered in Marlborough, Massachusetts.
Moscow (Russia). At the time, this region was one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union.