Anatoly Petrovich Alexandrov

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Russian postage stamp for the 100th birthday of Anatoly Petrovich Alexandrov

Anatoly Alexandrov ( Russian Анатолий Петрович Александров ; born January 31, jul. / 13. February  1903 greg. In Taraschtscha , Kiev Governorate , Russian Empire ; †  3. February 1994 in Moscow ) was a Russian physicist , one of the founders of Soviet nuclear technology and from 1975 to 1986 President of the Soviet Academy of Sciences .

Life

Alexandrov came from a family of lawyers who moved from the small town of Tarashcha to Kiev in 1906, where his father was appointed justice of the peace (later, Alexandrov referred to his father's profession as a teacher because he feared pressure from the Stalinist regime). Alexandrow finished secondary school there in 1919, although the turmoil of the Russian civil war had initially prevented further education. He had been forcibly drafted and had to serve in the army of the white general Pyotr Wrangel , but after a few months he had fled the troops and had returned to Kiev. There Alexandrov became a chemistry and physics teacher and studied from 1925 at the University of Kiev . Parallel to his studies, he was a volunteer at the university's (medical) X-ray Institute, where he met his future friend and scientific companion, Igor Kurchatov . After completing his studies in 1930, he went to Leningrad on the recommendation of his mentor Abram Fjodorowitsch Joffe , where he became a research assistant at the Physico-Technical Institute there, which Joffe took over as head. Alexandrov achieved an important scientific achievement as early as 1933: He developed a method for producing frost-resistant rubber material from synthetic rubber, which could be used to make tires for airplanes and cars.

During the Second World War, together with Kurchatov and WM Tutschkewitsch, he developed a method for demagnetizing ship hulls in order to protect them from mines, for which they were awarded the Stalin Prize.

From 1943 he was involved in the Soviet nuclear weapons project and was Kurchatov's deputy in the secret laboratory No. 2 of the Academy of Sciences, which later became the Kurchatov Institute . His main focus during this time was the problem of the production of deuterium and the production of weapons- grade plutonium . From 1946 to 1955 he was head of the Institute for Physical Problems of the Soviet Academy of Sciences as the successor to Pyotr Leonidowitsch Kapiza . In 1952 he was appointed head of the project for the production of nuclear-powered submarines and was awarded the Order of Hero of Socialist Labor and an Order of Lenin for the successes achieved there on January 4, 1954 . In 1955 he became deputy director and in 1960 - after the death of Kurchatov - director of the Kurchatov Institute. After his retirement at the age of over 80, he became honorary director of the institute. In the 1960s, on his initiative, the largest Russian facility for helium liquefaction was built at the Kurchatov Institute, which enabled research into low-temperature physics and superconductivity.

Alexandrov did not join the CPSU until 1960 at the age of 57 at the express request of Nikita Khrushchev and became a member of the Central Committee of the party as early as 1966, until its collapse in 1991. In the 1960s and 1970s he was a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR several times .

Alexandrov was not only involved in the development of Soviet nuclear weapons, but was also engaged in the civilian use of nuclear power. On his initiative, the first nuclear power plants were built in the Soviet Union, which were to be used exclusively for peaceful use, and in 1959 the first nuclear- powered icebreaker Lenin put into service. His fundamental work on the problems of plasma physics and controllable thermonuclear synthesis are still considered the fundamentals of atomic physics today. He made important contributions to the development of nuclear drives for ships and submarines. In addition, he made contributions to strength theory and the physical properties of high polymers and dielectrics.

Alexandrov was from 1943 corresponding and from 1953 full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. From 1975 to 1986 he was President of the Academy. In 1988 he became an honorary citizen of the city of Severodvinsk , where a street has been named after his death. Since 1976 he was a foreign member of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR .

Alexandrov experienced the hardest hour of his scientific career in 1986 after the Chernobyl disaster : He was the one who had planned the nuclear reactor and as such he had to be accused of omissions and knowledge deficits, even "sloppiness". For this reason he resigned as President of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and increasingly lost influence and prestige.

Alexandrov died of cardiac arrest in 1994.

Honors

Since 2013, the Russian Academy of Sciences has awarded the Alexandrov Gold Medal for outstanding achievements in the field of nuclear physics and technology.

literature

  • Article about Alexandrov in: Большая Российская энциклопедия. Volume 1: А - Анкетирование. "Большая Российская энциклопедия". Moscow 2005, ISBN 5-85270-329-X (German: Great Russian Encyclopedia ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Members of the previous academies. Anatoly Petrovich Alexandrov. In: bbaw.de. Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities , accessed on February 14, 2015 .
  2. ^ A. P. Alexandrov Gold Medal. Золотая медаль имени А.П. Александрова . Russian Academy of Sciences, archived from the original on May 5, 2019 ; Retrieved May 16, 2018 (Russian).
predecessor Office successor
Mstislav Vsevolodowitsch Keldysch Soviet Academy of Sciences
1975–1986 		Guri Ivanovich Martschuk
personal data
SURNAME Alexandrow, Anatoly Petrovich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Александров, Анатолий Петрович (Russian); Aleksandrov, Anatoly Petrovič
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian physicist
DATE OF BIRTH February 13, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Tarashcha , Kiev Governorate , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH 3rd February 1994
Place of death Moscow