Anatoly Alexandrov | |
|---|---|
Анатолий Александров | |
 Alexandrov in 1976 | |
| Born | Anatoly Petrovich Alexandrov (1903-02-13)13 February 1903 Tarashcha,Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire (now Ukraine) |
| Died | February 3, 1994(1994-02-03) (aged 90) Moscow, Russia |
| Resting place | Mitinskoe Cemetery |
| Siglum | A. P. Alexandrov |
| Alma mater | Kiev University |
| Known for | Soviet atomic bomb project Nuclear marine propulsion |
| Awards |  Lomonosov Gold Medal Hero of Socialist Labor Lenin Prize Stalin Prize |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics |
| Institutions | Laboratory No. 2 Institute for Physical Problems Leningrad Polytechnic Institute Kiev Institute of Health |
| Thesis | Relaxation in Polymers (1941) |
| Doctoral students | Yuri Semenovich Lazurkin |
| Website | A.P Alexandrov |
Anatoly Petrovich Alexandrov (Russian:Анато́лий Петро́вич Алекса́ндров, 13 February 1903 – 3 February 1994) was a Russianphysicist who played a crucial and centralizing role in the formerSoviet program of nuclear weapons.
During his lifetime, Alexandrov was the recipient of many honors, civil citations, and state awards for this work and was also the director of theKurchatov Institute and the President of theSoviet Academy of Sciences from 1975 until 1986.
Anatoly Alexandrov was born on 13 February 1903 into a Russian family of a prominent judge in the town ofTarashcha,Kiev Governorate,Russian Empire (now in Ukraine).
In 1919, at the height of theRussian Civil War, Alexandrov graduated from high school inKiev. The certificate gave the right to enter the university at the physics and mathematics or medical faculty. When theRed Army captured Kiev on February 5, 1919, Alexandrov and a friend were at adacha inMlynka. He and his friend encountered an officer of theWhite Guard, who urged them to enlist. They went to the front with the officer.[1]
At the age of 16, he became a cadet and fought in theArmy of Wrangel as amachine gunner, and was awarded threeCrosses of St. George. During the evacuation of remnants of the White Guard army fromCrimea toTurkey, Alexandrov refused to leave and preferred to stay. As a result, he was captured and sentenced to death, but he narrowly escaped.[2]
Later he worked as an assistant at the Kiev Mining Institute as an electrician. He later worked as an electrical engineer at the Kiev Physicochemical Society under the Political Education and a high school teacher in the village of Belki, Kiev region. For several years, he combined his studies at the Physics and Mathematics Faculty ofKiev University, where he studied from 1924 to 1930, with teaching physics and chemistry at school#79 in Kiev.[3]
After graduating from Faculty of Physics in Kiev University in 1930, he worked at the X-ray Physics Department in theKiev Institute of Health. After his graduation in 1930, he was invited byAbram Ioffe to join him inLeningrad. AtLeningrad Physicotechnical Institute, he developed a statistical theory of strength and doctoral dissertation - "Relaxation in Polymers" (1941).[4]
From the spring of 1931, he worked at theLeningrad Polytechnic Institute, where he became a candidate, and then a professor of physical and mathematical sciences.
Alexandrov became prominent duringWorld War II, when he devised in collaboration withIgor Kurchatov a method of demagnetizing ships to protect them from Germannaval mines, known as the LPTI system. On 9 August 1941, Alexandrov and Kurchatov arrived inSevastopol to organize work on equipping theBlack Sea Fleet ships with the system, and by the end of October it had been installed on more than 50 ships. At the same time, Alexksandrov and Kurchatov continued research to improve it. The method was effective by the end of 1941 and was in active use through the end of the war and afterwards. It was successfully used by theSoviet Navy, during theSiege of Sevastopol,Siege of Leningrad, on theVolga River during theBattle of Stalingrad and in theBaltic Sea campaigns.[5]
Both Alexandrov and Kurchatov worked at theIoffe Institute by that time (their laboratory separated from the Ioffe Institute and moved to Moscow in 1943 for the work on theSoviet atomic bomb project).[6]
From 1946 to 1955, he was director of theInstitute for Physical Problems, where he was appointed to replacePyotr Kapitsa. In 1955, he became deputy director of the Institute of Atomic Energy, and after the death of Kurchatov in 1960, he became its director. On the initiative of Alexandrov, power plants for thenuclear icebreakersLenin,Arktika, andSibir were developed.[7]
Alexandrov was a member of theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union from 1962. It was under the leadership of Alexandrov, that technical, organizational and production problems were solved in an unprecedentedly short time during the construction of theUSSR's first nuclear submarine with a nuclear propulsion system. As a result, in 1952-1972,Sevmash mastered the serial production of submarines with a nuclear propulsion system and became the largest nuclear submarine shipbuilding center in the USSR and the world. At Sevmash, 163 combat submarines were built. In the 1970s, the company producedTyphoon-class nuclear submarines, which entered into theGuinness Book of Records as the largest submarines in the world.[8]
In the 1960s, on the initiative of Alexandrov, the largest helium liquefaction plant was built in the USSR . This provided a wide front for fundamental research in the physics of low temperatures, as well as on the technical use ofsuperconductivity. He was the scientific supervisor of the project ofRBMK reactor plants.[9]
Described by colleagues as a brilliant scientist and organizer, he was deeply affected by theChernobyl disaster, the worst nuclear accident in history. According to him:
"To manage such an institute as theIAE, the largest institute and the most difficult work, and at the same time take care of the Academy - I must say, it was extremely difficult. In the end it ended sadly. And when the Chernobyl accident happened, I believe that from that time both my life began to end, and my creative life."
The accident subsequently prompted theSoviet Government to review and suspend the ambitious nuclear power program. As principal designer of theRBMK reactor that exploded at Chernobyl, Alexandrov refused to concede that a design flaw contributed to the disaster.[10]
Alexandrov died ofcardiac arrest on 3 February 1994 inMoscow. He is buried at the city'sMitinskoe Cemetery.
Alexandrov was first married to Antonina Mikhailovna Zolotareva, with whom he had a son Yuri, a physicist. Antonina died in 1947. Alexandrov later remarried to Marianna Alexandrovna Balashov. They had a daughter Maria, who became a biologist, and two sons Peter and Alexander. Peter became a physicist and Alexander became abiologist. Marianna died in 1986.
His nephew isEugene Alexandrov, a Russian physicist and member of theRussian Academy of Sciences (since 1992).
 | Cross of St. George, 2nd class |
 | Cross of St. George, 3rd class |
 | Cross of St. George, 4th class |
| Academic offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | President of theAcademy of Sciences of the USSR 1975–1986 | Succeeded by |
