Born July 30, 1889, in Murom, present-day Vladimir Oblast. American engineer and inventor in the field of electronics, famous as the inventor of television. Russian by nationality.

In 1912, Zworykin graduated from the St. Petersburg Technological Institute; in 1914, from the College de France in Paris. In 1917 he emigrated from Russia. In 1919 he arrived in the USA, and in 1920 he went to work for the Westing-house Electric Company in Pittsburgh. In 1926 he received the doctor of philosophy degree at the University of Pittsburgh, and in 1938 he received the doctor of science degree at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. After 1929 he worked at the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), heading electronics laboratories in Camden and Princeton (N.J.).

In 1931, Zworykin built the first iconoscope, a transmitting tube that made possible the development of electronic television systems. Zworykin is known for his work on photocells, electron multipliers, and electron microscopes, as well as electronic traffic control systems. From 1954 to 1962 he was the director of a center of medical electronics. Since 1954 he has been an honorary vice-president of RCA. He is a member of the American Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and many other academies and scientific societies.