From heavy-water reactors to the world's largest accelerator: 23-year director of ITEP
After Khrushchev agreed not to arrest ITEP dissidents in 1956, Alikhanov told the four who had spoken at the party meeting: 'If you knew what you were doing, you're heroes. If you didn't, you're fools.'
A founder of Soviet nuclear physics. His positron spectroscopy (1933–40) and magnetic spectrometer built with Kozodayev laid the basis for Soviet nuclear electronics. In the atomic project he was scientific secretary of the Special Committee's council, leading heavy-water reactor development. In 1945 he founded Laboratory No. 3, later ITEP, directing it for 23 years and personally leading the USSR's first heavy-water research reactor (1949) and first industrial heavy-water reactor (1951). ITEP's 7 GeV synchrotron (1961) served as prototype for the 70 GeV Serpukhov accelerator, the world's largest in 1967. Never a Party member, he shielded staff during anti-cosmopolitan purges, signed the 'Letter of 300' against Lysenkoism, and in 1966 joined Kapitsa and Sakharov opposing Stalin's rehabilitation.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1927–1941Researcher, Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute (LFTI)
- 1933–1941Head of Positron Laboratory, LFTI
- 1945Scientific Secretary, Scientific-Technical Council of the Special Committee
- 1945–1968Director, Laboratory No. 3 / ITEP
- 1947–1951Head, Department of Structure of Matter, MSU
Related historical events
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic WarPhysicist evacuated during the warIn October 1941, as Nazi forces approached, he was evacuated to Kazan with the Institute for Physical Problems.
- 1943–1949The Soviet Atomic ProjectThe heavy water lineHe led work on heavy water moderated reactors, the branch running alongside the graphite route.
Wartime evacuation, cosmic-ray work on Aragats, and the founding of YerPhI (1941–43)
In the summer of 1941 Alikhanov planned to study cosmic rays, then the only known source of high-energy particles, in the Pamir Mountains. The plan collapsed as Nazi forces approached, and in October 1941 he was evacuated to Kazan with the Institute for Physical Problems. In April 1942 he moved to Yerevan, Soviet Armenia, intending to study cosmic rays on Mount Aragats.
The Aragats expedition identified an intense group of comparatively low-energy protons and a stream of fast protons in the soft cosmic-radiation component. His group sought to explain why the soft component showed a greater ionizing capacity than its known composition of electrons, positrons, muons and photons would predict, and the results stimulated the growth of elementary particle physics as a new field. Within cosmic-ray research more broadly, the Aragats measurements belong to a line that began with the 1934 east-west anisotropy measurements by a Leningrad Physical-Technical Institute group, which the brothers' 1942 expedition substantially developed.
In the same period Alikhanov and his younger brother Artem Alikhanian argued for cosmic-ray particles they called varitrons, supposedly possessing a broad spectrum of masses. The claim was questioned in the West and attacked by a group of Soviet physicists, producing a bitter polemic in Soviet physics journals that was never officially settled and left Soviet cosmic-ray research short of prestige. It remained an unconfirmed hypothesis.
In 1943 the two brothers established the Yerevan Physics Institute as a branch of Yerevan State University, and high-altitude cosmic-ray stations were later founded on Mount Aragats (3,200 m) and at Nor Amberd (2,000 m). The institute became a centre of Armenian physics, and Alikhanov's brother Artem led it for many years.