Boris Boltaks was born in 1912 in the town of Zhashkov in Kiev Province (present-day Cherkasy Oblast, Ukraine).
From an early age, Boltaks was fascinated with physics. After finishing school, he enrolled in the Leningrad Industrial Institute (the present-day St. Petersburg Polytechnic University). Upon graduating in 1938, Boris Boltaks pursued his scientific research under the tutelage of the academician Abram Ioffe. Shortly thereafter, Boltaks was drafted into the Red Army as a political worker.
In late June 1941, following the outbreak of the Soviet-German War, Boltaks volunteered for frontline service, waiving the exemption that he enjoyed as a nuclear physicist. Shortly thereafter, Boltaks became commander of a rifle battalion. In 1942, he was wounded, but returned to active service, becoming commander of a rifle division. He went on to hold this command until the end of the war. By its end, Boris Boltaks had been awarded the Orders of the Red Banner, of the Patriotic War (both 1st and 2nd class), and of Alexander Nevsky, as well as medals.
In 1946, having been discharged from the army in the rank of colonel, Boris Boltaks returned to Leningrad and began to work at the Department of Semiconductors of the Leningrad Physical-Technical Institute, where he studied diffuse processes. He later became head of a laboratory at the Institute. In 1948, Boltaks defended a candidate dissertation, followed by a doctoral dissertation in 1962. Throughout his scientific career, he authored three monographs and more than 120 scholarly articles. Boltaks went on to teach at the Abram Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute to the very end of his life.
Boris Boltaks died in Leningrad in 1985.
