PHYSICIST AND LYRICIST ABRAHAM ALIKHANOV
Vestnik Kavkaza, Russia
Sept 22 2014
22 September 2014 – 1:52pm
By Yana Vinetskaya exclusively for Vestnik Kavkaza
Abraham Alikhnov was one of the founders of Soviet nuclear physics, an
academician of the USSR and Armenian Academies of Science, the founder
and the director of the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental
Physics (called Laboratory N3 in Stalin’s times), a holder of three
Stalin awards. In 1949, the Soviet Union created the first heavy-water
reactor under his supervision. Stalin considered him a candidate to
head the nuclear project, the other candidate being Kurchatov.
Abraham Alikhanov was born in an Armenian family in Yelizavetpol
(modern Ganja, Azerbaijan) on March 4, 1904. His father was a train
driver on the Trans-Caucasus Railway, his mother was a housewife.
According to Abraham Alikhanov’s recollection, his father “was known
and liked all over the Caucasus, Azerbaijani, Georgian and Armenian
railways.” Abraham’s brother Artem became a notable experimental
physicist. In 1912, the family moved to Alexandropol (Gyumri, Armenia),
where his father was sent for work. The family moved to Tiflis the next
year, Alikhanov started his studies at a commercial school there. In
1918, the family moved to Alexandropol. It left the city a day before
it was captured by Turks in 1920 and they returned to their relatives’
place in Tiflis.
A year after, Alikhanov joined the Mining and Chemistry Faculty of
the Polytechnic Institute in Tiflis. He was then sent to Petrograd,
where he entered the Chemical Faculty of the 2nd Petrograd Polytechnic
Institute. In 1924, Alikhanov shifted to the Faculty of Physics
and Mechanics headed by A.F. Ioffe, the father of Boris Ioffe. As a
student in 1927 Alikhanov became a member of the Leningrad Physics
and Mathematics Institute. Two years later, with a degree in physics,
he became the head of an X-ray laboratory, where he worked before
the start of the Great Patriotic War. For two years Alikhanov was
working on construction of a cyclotron of the Radium Institute under
the supervision of V.G. Khloponin, together with G.A. Gamov, I.V.
Kurchatov and L.V. Mysovsky. He was also part of the research group
monitoring the first artificial radiation in 1934.
On August 20, 1945, two weeks after the Hiroshima nuclear bombing,
Alikhanov joined the Soviet nuclear project as an academic secretary
of the Technical Committee of the SDC Special Committee. The same
year, Alikhanov started organizing the so-called Laboratory N3 for
development of nuclear reactor and nuclear physics research. In 1949,
the Laboratory was renamed to the USSR AS Technical Heat Laboratory,
in 1957 to the Institute for Theoretic and Experimental Physics. He
headed the research facility for about 25 years.
The Laboratory started designing the first Soviet heavy-water research
reactor. It was launched in two years. Heavy-water reactors had very
important advantages compared with graphite reactors, and played
a significant role in solving problems with fission materials for
nuclear weapons. Alikhanov was also studying space rays, a priority
subject of modern world science. With the help of Alikhanov, the USSR
invented a proton accelerator and a synchrophasotron.
In 1955, after another test of a Soviet hydrogen bomb, nuclear
authorities Kurchatov, Alikhanov, Alexandrov and Vinogradov wrote a
letter to party leaders, claiming that a world war with deployment of
hydrogen bombs could destroy humanity and a new international policy
was needed to prevent that. Alikhanov wrote a letter criticizing the
biological views of T.D. Lysenko the same year.
Alikhnov was characterised by his individual decency. Physicist
Boris Ioffe, one of his colleagues, recalled: “Alikhanov was picking
staff only based on their science skills (and decency, of course,
scoundrels were not hired). Such personal details as nationality or
party alignment were of no importance. My case is an example. I was
the only Jew in the course of the Physics Faculty in 1949 to get a
good spot.
The rest either got no appointments, spent a long time seeking work
and finally getting a job differing from their specialization (for
example, a guide at a planetarium), or were sent to work at factories
outside Moscow.”
Alikhanov’s wife Svetlana Roshal was a winner of the International
Violin Contest, the Alikhanov house was always filled with music.
Dmitry Shostakovich was a regular guest there. The famous composers
Kablevsky and Khachaturyan were close friends of the family. A portrait
of the scientist drawn by Saryan could be seen in the house.
L.L. Goldin, an executive of Alikhanov, remembered the house
of Alikhanov as follows: “Paintings of Saryan and Boris-Musatov,
beautiful copies of French impressionists, van Gogh, books about
the Italian Renaissance, violin concerts of his wife and daughter,
the son’s royal piano, Alikhanov’s science library – it all created
an amazing mixture of art and science, the most salutary mixture in
the world.”
In the late 1960s, when Alikhnov’s group failed to create a
thorium-based reactor, the proton accelerator in the laboratory was
moved to a different institute. It was a real disaster for Alikhanov,
causing a cerebral haemorrhage. In 1968 he resigned as the director
of the Institute for Theoretic and Experimental Physics and died two
years later.
From: Baghdasarian
http://vestnikkavkaza.net/articles/society/60210.html