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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Abram Alikhanov | 4/4 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abram_Alikhanov | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T17:41:26.105097+00:00 | kb-cron |
Alikhanov never joined the Communist Party. According to his colleague Boris L. Ioffe, Alikhanov "did not like the Soviet regime" and was "fairly outspoken." He told his colleagues that Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin's secret police chief, was a "dreadful person" before Beria's downfall and was the only major physicist who visited Pyotr Kapitsa when he was sent into exile near Moscow on Stalin's orders. Alikhanov later signed a collective letter addressed to the Soviet leaders asking them to return Kapitsa to the head of the Institute for Physical Problems. In 1944 Alikhanov, along with Abram A. Ioffe, and Pyotr Kapitsa successfully appealed to Vice Premier Vyacheslav Molotov to prevent Anatoly Vlasov from assuming the chair of the Department of Theoretical Physics at the Faculty of Physics of the Moscow State University (MSU). Instead, Vladimir Fock was appointed. He did not collaborate with the authorities during the antisemitic anti-cosmopolitan and the Doctors' plot campaigns in the post-war years when Jews were fired from their workplaces. Abov noted that Alikhanov protected his colleagues during the campaign, though "of course, there were victims, but he was able to minimize them." In October 1955 Alikhanov was among a number of leading Soviet scientists who signed the "Letter of 300" criticizing Trofim Lysenko and Lysenkoism and supporting genetics. In 1956 Alikhanov came under pressure when several members of the ITEP staff gave pro-democracy speeches at the institute's Communist Party organization. The party organization was disbanded. Alikhanov had a meeting with Khrushchev and the latter told him that he sought to prevent the arrest of the dissidents. In his turn, Alikhanov told the dissidents: "If you knew what you were doing, you're heroes. If you didn't, you're fools." Yuri Orlov, one of the dissidents who was forced to leave ITEP, found work at the Yerevan Physics Institute, headed by Alikhanov's brother, Artem. Orlov noted that after Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin in 1956, Alikhanov was among "some 20-30 leading physicists" who "were very active in writing collective letters (not for publication, of course) to the [Soviet] leaders protesting attempts to restore or protect Stalinism" when "the majority of scientists [...] were afraid to participate in such activity." In March 1966 he joined Pyotr Kapitsa, Andrei Sakharov and others calling on Leonid Brezhnev not to rehabilitate Stalin.
== Recognition and legacy ==
The Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEP), which Alikhanov led from its inception in 1945 until 1968, was named after him in 2004. Alikhanov is widely recognized as one of the leading Soviet physicists. A 1974 obituary in Soviet Physics Uspekhi called Alikhanov "one of the founders of nuclear physics in our country." Mikhail Shifman described Alikhanov as the founder of experimental nuclear and particle physics in the Soviet Union, along with Igor Kurchatov, and one of the "fathers" of Soviet particle physics, along with Lev Landau and Isaak Pomeranchuk. Yuri Abov opined that Alikhanov's research from 1933 to 1940 was worthy of a Nobel Prize. In a 1945 letter to Stalin, Pyotr Kapitsa wrote: "Comrades Alikhanov, Ioffe, and Kurchatov are as competent as I or even more so." Yuri Orlov suggested that Alikhanov "was not such a genius as Landau or Kapitsa", but argued that he was "a distinguished scientist and honest man", who transmitted to his students "his awesomely high standards." A street in Yerevan is named for the Alikhanian brothers, while Academician Alikhanov Street in Moscow was renamed in 2018. An hour long documentary film on Alikhanov was produced by the Public TV of Armenia in 2019.
=== Honors ===
== References == Notes
Citations
== External links ==
== Further reading == "Алиханов Абрам Исаакович (1904—1970) [Alikhanov Abram Isaakovich (1904-1970)]". biblioatom.ru. Rosatom. Archived from the original on 19 July 2019. Garibian, G. M., ed. (1987). Աբրահամ Իսահակի Ալիխանով / Абрам Исаакович Алиханов (in Armenian and Russian). Yerevan: Armenian SSR Academy of Sciences. archived PDF Abov, Yuri G. (2004). Академик А. И. Алиханов: воспоминания, письма, документы [Academician A. I. Alikhanov: Memories, Letters, Documents] (in Russian). Moscow: Fizmatlit. ISBN 5-9221-0478-0. (archived PDF, alt) Frenkel, V. J. (1990). "Alikhanov, Abram Isaakovich". In Frederic L. Holmes (ed.). Dictionary of Scientific Biography Supplement II. Vol. 17. Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 15–16. ISBN 0-684-19177-6.