Abram Alikhanov

Abram Isaakovich Alikhanov (Russian: Абрам Исаакович Алиханов, born Alikhanian; 4 March [O.S. 20 February] 1904 – 8 December 1970) was a Soviet Armenian experimental physicist[3] who specialized in particle and nuclear physics. He was one of the Soviet Union's leading physicists.

Abram Isaakovich Alikhanov
Born	Abraham Alikhanian 4 March [O.S. 20 February] 1904 Elisabethpol, Elisabethpol Governorate, Russian Empire (today Ganja, Azerbaijan)
Died	8 December 1970(1970-12-08) (aged 66) Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Nationality	Armenian[1][2]
Citizenship	Soviet Union
Alma mater	Leningrad Polytechnic Institute
Scientific career
Fields	Particle physics, nuclear physics
Institutions	Physical-Technical Institute (1927–41) Laboratory no. 2 (1943–45) Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics (1945–68)
Influences	Abram Ioffe

Alikhanov studied X-rays and cosmic rays before joining the Soviet atomic bomb project. Between 1945 and 1968 he directed the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEP) in Moscow, which was named after him in 2004. He led the development of both the first research and the first industrial heavy water reactors in the Soviet Union. They were commissioned in 1949 and 1951, respectively. He was also a pioneer in Soviet accelerator technology. In 1934 he and Igor Kurchatov created a "baby cyclotron", the first "cyclotron" operating outside of Berkeley, California. He was the driving force behind the construction of the 70 GeV synchrotron in Serpukhov (1967), the largest in the world at the time.

His brother, Artem Alikhanian, was based in Soviet Armenia and led the Yerevan Physics Institute for many years.

Early life

Alikhanov was born Abraham Alikhanian (Armenian: Աբրահամ Ալիխանյան)[lower-alpha 1] on 4 March [O.S. 20 February] 1904 in Elisabethpol (today Ganja, Azerbaijan) to Armenian parents.[5][4][6][3][1] His father, Isahak Alikhanian (d. 1925),[5] was a railroad engineer (train driver) in the Transcaucasus Railway, while his mother, Yulia Artemevna (née Sulkhanova), was a housewife.[5][4][3] His younger brother, Artem Alikhanian (1908–78), was also a noted physicist.[4][1] They had two sisters: Araksia (b. 1906) and Ruzanna (b. 1913).[5][4] His family lived in Alexandropol (today Gyumri) in 1912–13, where Abram attended a commercial college.[5] The family then moved to Tiflis (today Tbilisi), where they lived until 1918. They again moved to live in Alexandropol until the Turkish–Armenian War of 1920. They returned to Tiflis and Abram graduated from a Tiflis commercial college in 1921.[5][4][3] He then enrolled in the Polytechnic Institute of Tiflis, but, for the most part, did not study in order to financially support himself and his family.[6] He worked as a cashier and telephone operator.[5]

Early career in Leningrad (1927–41)

In 1923 Alikhanov moved to Leningrad and enrolled in the chemistry department of the Polytechnic Institute.[6] In 1924 he transferred to the department of physics and mechanics, founded by Abram Ioffe. Besides Ioffe, other prominent scientists taught there, including Nikolay Semyonov and Yakov Frenkel.[5] In 1925–27 he worked at the Mechnikov Hospital as a radiographer.[5] He graduated in 1929.[5]

He was awarded a PhD in Physical and Mathematical Sciences in 1935.[5] He lectured at the St. Petersburg State Transport University in 1939–41 and chaired the Department of Physics there.[5]

X-rays (1927–33)

In 1927 Alikhanov began working part-time at the Physical-Technical Institute in Leningrad as a researcher focusing on X-rays, X-ray diffraction, and solid-state physics.[5][3] In 1929 he published his first paper on the use of X-ray analysis in investigating the crystal structure of the copper-aluminum alloy.[3][5] In 1929, after graduating from the Polytechnic Institute, he was employed by the Physical-Technical Institute full-time.[5] He began a long-time collaboration with his younger brother, Artem, and Lev Artsimovich in 1930.[5] Under the supervision of Pyotr Ivanovich Lukirskii, head of the X-ray laboratory, Alikhanov and Artsimovich studied X-ray optics from 1930 to 1933.[5][4] Results included a "study of total internal reflection of X-rays from thin layers of various substances."[3] He showed that aluminum does not undergo allotropic transformation when X-rayed at 550–600°C. He also did a "study of the total internal reflection of X rays from thin layers and the estimation of the depth of their penetration into the medium. Alikhanov also proved that the laws of classical optics can be applied to the reflection of hard X rays."[4] Alikhanov summarized the results in a 1933 monograph titled X-Ray Optics (Оптика рентгеновских лучей).[6][5]

Nuclear physics (1933–41)

Ioffe, Alikhanov and Kurchatov in the early 1930s

Alikhanov switched to nuclear physics in 1933, following the discovery of the neutron and the positron in 1932.[5][6][3] Abram Ioffe appointed Alikhanov head of the positron laboratory at the Department of Solid-State Physics at the Physical-Technical Institute.[6][5] His group studied pair production and gamma rays and made observations of positrons using Geiger counters. According to Viktor Frenkel, their work became a "starting point for the application of radio engineering to experimental nuclear physics in the Soviet Union."[4]

Above wrote that in 1933–34 Alikhanov and his colleagues were the "first to study in detail the spectrum of positrons from external pair conversion over the entire energy range. Among other things, they showed that, in accord with relevant theoretical results, the maximum of the spectrum occurs in the vicinity of the positron energy equal to half the endpoint energy."[6] He added, "those investigations made it possible to reveal gamma lines that had previously been unknown, whereby it was possible to reconstruct the diagrams of decays of excited nuclei."[6]

They went on to study beta decay using not the usual Wilson cloud chamber, but a spectrometer developed by Alikhanov and Mikhail Kozodayev.[4] It was a "radically improved" version of the "classical magnetic spectrometer with transverse field, fitting it with a system of coincidence-coupled gas-discharge counters. The use of this registration system was an important methodological novelty. It opened the way to development of Soviet nuclear electronics, which has been advanced in many of its aspects by Alikhanov's students. The new magnetic spectrometer was capable of registering the comparatively infrequent processes of positron production and could be used to investigate their energy spectra, the dependence of positron yield on γ-quantum energy and on the atomic number of the element, etc."[3]

In 1934 Alikhanov and Igor Kurchatov built a "baby cyclotron", which became the first "cyclotron" operating outside of Berkeley, California where Ernest Lawrence had invented it years earlier. It did not operate for long, though some experiments were conducted.[7][8][9] The first proper cyclotron in the Soviet Union was built at the Radium Institute in Leningrad by 1936.[7]

Alikhanov "discovered that positrons were present even in the absence of a converter made from a heavy element, and this led him to the discovery of a new phenomenon—production of an electron-positron pair as a result of internal conversion of the energy of the excited nucleus." This was later used in nuclear spectroscopy. Alikhanov's group also studied scattering of fast electrons in matter and beta spectra of radioactive substances.[3] In 1938 Alikhanov discovered a new method of determining the rest mass of the neutrino using decay of the nuclei of ⁷Be.[4]

Cosmic rays (1941–42)

Alikhanov planned to study cosmic rays, the only source of high-energy particles known at that time,[3] in the Pamir Mountains in the summer of 1941, however, due to the approaching Nazi forces, Alikhanov and the Institute for Physical Problems were evacuated to Kazan in October 1941. In April 1942 he moved to Yerevan, Soviet Armenia with the intention to study cosmic rays at Mount Aragats.[5][4][3] The expedition to Aragats resulted in the discovery of the "presence of an intense group of protons with comparatively small energies in the soft cosmic-radiation component"[3][5] and "presence of a stream of fast protons in cosmic radiation."[4]

Alikhanov and his group, including his brother Artem Alikhanian, also erroneously concluded in the existence of cosmic radiation particles, called by them varitrons, which supposedly possessed a broad spectrum of masses. Alikhanov-Alikhanian brothers were widely criticized for the claim.[4][6] Turkevich noted in 1956 that "this claim was questioned in the West and attacked by a group of Soviet physicists, with a subsequent bitter polemic in the Soviet physics journals. The controversy has never been settled officially, and Soviet cosmic ray research has suffered a lack of prestige."[10]

Career in Moscow (1942–68)

After returning to Russia from Armenia, Alikhanov worked at the Institute for Physical Problems in Moscow from 1944 to 1946.[5]

Between 1947 and 1951 Alikhanov headed the Department of Structure of Matter at the Faculty of Physics and Technology of Moscow State University.[5][11] He helped organize the Nuclear Physics Division of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.[3]

Among Alikhanov's students were Boris S. Dzhelepov, Venedikt P. Dzhelepov, Mikhail S. Kozodaev, Sergey Ya. Nikitin, Pyotr E. Spivak.[5]

Atomic bomb project

Alikhanov was involved in the Soviet atomic bomb project.[1][12] After the Soviet authorities learned of the German, British and American programs of nuclear weapons in mid-1942, works began on the Soviet project led by Igor Kurchatov. At Laboratory no. 2, Alikhanov was assigned to develop a nuclear pile with heavy water.[13] Lev Artsimovich, Isaak Kikoin, and Anatoly Alexandrov worked on electromagnetic isotope separation, gaseous diffusion process and thermal diffusion process, respectively.[13] While Alikhanov led the research on the construction of a heavy-water reactor.[14]

In August 1945 the Special Committee under the Council of Ministers (Council of People's Commissars) was formed to oversee works on uranium. Lavrentiy Beria was named it head. The Scientific-Technical Council was headed by Boris Vannikov and included Alikhanov (initially as it scientific secretary), Igor Kurchatov, Pyotr Kapitsa, Abram Ioffe and others.[13][15][16]

ITEP

The Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEP) in Moscow

On December 1, 1945 Laboratory no. 3 of the Soviet Academy of Sciences was established in Moscow with Alikhanov as its head.[17][5][18][6] The laboratory was renamed to Heat-Engineering Laboratory (Теплотехническая лаборатория) in 1949[17] and received its modern name, the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEP), in 1958.[19][6][4] Alikhanov lead the institute for 23 years, until he retired in 1968.[20] Lev Landau and his student Isaak Pomeranchuk headed the theory division of the institute in 1945–46 and 1946–66, respectively.[21][22]

At ITEP, Alikhanov led research on and advanced scintillation techniques, bubble chambers, and spark chambers.[3]

Nuclear reactor

The laboratory/institute initially focused on what Alikhanov had already begun working on: construction of a nuclear reactor based on heavy water.[15] With a small staff, Alikhanov led the design of the first reactor by 1947.[6][5] It was built in 1948 and successfully put into operation on April 25, 1949.[15][3] Alikhanov was personally heavily involved in the project. He solved all the "physical and technical problems that arose in construction of the reactor," and tackled the "dirtiest jobs without hesitation; thus the reactor was for the most part his creature."[3] It was the first heavy-water research reactor in the USSR.[23] A number of studies and discoveries were done based on it. It was shut down in 1987.[23]

The reactor was not invented for nuclear power generation,[6] but instead for experiments that would advance the design and construction of other reactors.[3] In 1959 Alikhanov led the design of 10 MW experimental research heavy-water reactors, which were built in China and Yugoslavia under his supervision.[23][6][3]

Alikhanov also led the project[23] of design the first industrial heavy-water reactor in the Soviet Union.[24][17] Named OK-180, it was commissioned in October 1951 in Chelyabinsk-65. Its heat exchangers froze shortly after it began operating.[24] It was decommissioned in 1965 and subsequently disassembled.[25][26] Until the end of his career, Alikhanov "remained a renowned head and a strong advocate" of heavy-water reactors, though graphite-moderated reactors were given the preference for their price.[6]

Accelerators

By 1952, after the completion of the heavy-water reactor, the main direction of Alikhanov's institute became construction of a high-energy accelerator.[3][5] A proton accelerator with a strong focusing of 7 GeV (gigaelectronvolt) was completed and commissioned at the institute in 1961.[3][6][4] The accelerator made it possible to conduct research on elementary particle physics on a broader scale at ITEP.[3] Alikhanov led several studies and investigations based on the new instrument,[6] most notably research on "pion scattering on nucleons with large momentum transfer."[3]

The 7-GeV accelerator served as a prototype or an operating model for the 70-GeV accelerator in Serpukhov, which was advanced by Alikhanov.[3][6] Alikhanov "became a motive force behind construction of the Serpukhov accelerator."[3] Alikhanov and his team participated in its design.[4] The Serpukhov accelerator was commissioned in 1967 and became the largest proton accelerator in the world at the time.[6][27]

Mikhail Shifman noted that Alikhanov was the "driving force behind the decision to build the first strong focusing accelerators" in the Soviet Union: at ITEP and at IHEP in Protvino, near Serpukhov.[20] The Serpukhov accelerator, construction on which had begun in 1960, was transferred to the Institute for High Energy Physics (IHEP).[28] Abov noted that the decision by the Ministry of Defense was an "irreparable blow" for Alikhanov, because it "deprived the institute of any prospects for further development."[6] The Ministry had alleged that the construction of the accelerator was slow, however, according to Abov, the Ministry had made a decision to transfer it to the IHEP from the very beginning.[6]

Parity violation

Between 1957 and 1960, following the Wu experiment, Alikhanov oversaw the research on parity violation in beta decay. Studies led by him confirmed Wu's findings and explored the structure of weak interaction.[6] Alikhanov was the first Soviet physicist to investigate it.[3] He measured the longitudinal polarization of electrons in β decay.[3]

Personal life and death

Alikhanov was known to his family and friends as "Abusha" (Абуша).[5] His colleagues and students wrote that he was "extremely straightforward and generous in his dealings with people, irrespective of whether the matter was a scientific or a merely personal problem."[3] He was described as "hot-tempered."[29]

Alikhanov married twice. He had two children with his first wife, Anna Grigorievna Prokofieva, who he married in 1925. His son, Ruben, was a physicist, while his daughter, Seda, was a writer.[30] His second wife, Slava Solomonovna Roshal (b. 1916) was a violinist. They had two children: Tigran (b. 1943), a pianist, and Yevgenia (b. 1949), a violinist.[5] Tigran served as rector (president) of the Moscow Conservatory in 2005–09.[31][5]

Alikhanov suffered a stroke in 1964. He resigned from his post as director of the ITEP in 1968.[5] Alikhanov died in Moscow on December 8, 1970[3][4] at the age of 66.[1] He was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.[5]

Relationship with the Communist Party

Alikhanov never joined the Communist Party.[6][2] 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 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.[32] 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.[33]

He did not collaborate with the authorities during the antisemitic rootless cosmopolitanism and the Doctors' plot campaign in the post-war years when Jews were fired from their workplaces.[34] Abov noted that Alikhanov protected his colleagues during the campaign, though "of course, there were victims, but he was able to minimize them."[6]

In October 1955 Alikhanov was among a number of leading Soviet scientists who signed the "Letter of 300" criticizing Trofim Lysenko.[35][36]

In 1956 Alikhanov came under pressure when several members of the ITEP staff gave pro-democracy speeches at the institute's Communist Party organization.[37] 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."[37] Yuri Orlov, one of the dissidents who was forced to leave ITEP, found work at the Yerevan Physics Institute, headed by Artem Alikhanian, Alikhanov's brother.[6]

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."[38] In March 1966 he joined Pyotr Kapitsa, Andrei Sakharov and others calling on Leonid Brezhnev not to rehabilitate Stalin.[39]

Recognition

"For all of the many facets of his scientific career, Alikhanov was primarily an experimental physicist—an experimentor in the highest sense of the word, as exemplified by Faraday and Rutherford. This was manifested in the eagerness with which he received all new experimental results, in the enthusiasm with which he introduced the most recent ideas in the procedure of physical experiments in his laboratory and at his institute. An acute appreciation for innovation in physics was characteristic of Alikhanov throughout his entire life."

 —Obituary in Soviet Physics Uspekhi (1974)[3]

The Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics, which Alikhanov led from its inception in 1945 until 1968,[20] was named after Alikhanov in 2004.[5]

Alikhanov is widely recognized as one of the leading Soviet physicists.[40][41] A 1974 obituary in Soviet Physics Uspekhi called Alikhanov "one of the founders of nuclear physics in our country."[3] Mikhail Shifman described Alikhanov as the founder of experimental nuclear and particle physics in the Soviet Union, along with Igor Kurchatov,[20] and one of the "fathers" of Soviet particle physics, along with Lev Landau and Isaak Pomeranchuk.[42] In a November 1945 letter to Stalin, Pyotr Kapitsa wrote: "Comrades Alikhanov, Ioffe, and Kurchatov are as competent as I or even more so."[43] Yuri Orlov opined that Alikhanov "was not such a genius as Landau or Kapitsa. But he was a distinguished scientist and honest man who gathered in his institute the same kind of men, and transmitted to us students his awesomely high standards."[44][45]

According to Abov, Alikhanov's research in 1933–40 "were at the highest scientific level worthy of a Nobel prize."[6]

The Armenian artist Martiros Sarian, a friend of his, painted a portrait of Alikhanov.[4]

Honors

Awards[5]

• Stalin Prize/USSR State Prize (1941, 1948, 1953)
• Order of the Red Banner of Labour (1964)
• Order of Lenin (1945, 1953)
• Hero of Socialist Labor (1954)[4]

Membership

• Corresponding member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences: January 1939[5][3][6]
• Full member (Academician) of the Soviet Academy of Sciences: 27 September 1943[5][3][6]
• Full member (Academician) of the Armenian Academy of Sciences: 1943[46]
• Foreign member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (1962)[5]

References

Notes

1. Abram is Russian for his Armenian name Abraham. He was born Alikhanian and Russified his last name to Alikhanov in Leningrad.[4][1]

Citations

1. "Abram Alikhanov, Soviet Physicist, 66". The New York Times. December 10, 1970. p. 50.
2. Ryabev, L. D., ed. (1998). Атомный проэкт СССР: документы и материалы [The Atomic Project of the USSR: Documents and Materials] Volume I (in Russian). Nauka, Russian Academy of Sciences. p. 313. Алиханов Абрам Исаакович — член-корреспондент Академии наук. Беспартийный. Армянин.
3. Aleksandrov, A. P.; Dzhelepov, V. P.; Nikitin, S. Ya.; Khariton, Yu. B. (1974). Translated by R. W. Bowers. "Abram Isaakovich Alikhanov (obituary)". Soviet Physics Uspekhi. 17 (2): 283–285. doi:10.1070/PU1974v017n02ABEH004342. Russian original (archived)
4. Frenkel, V. J. (December 20, 2019). "Alikhanov, Abram Isaakovich". Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. encyclopedia.com.
5. "Алиханов Абрам Исаакович [Alikhanov Abram Isaakovich]". isaran.ru (in Russian). Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Archived from the original on 23 June 2019. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
6. Abov, Yu. G. (March 2004). Translated by A. Isaakyan. "Abram Isaakovich Alikhanov—scientist, director, personality". Physics of Atomic Nuclei. 67 (3): 431–437. Bibcode:2004PAN....67..431A. doi:10.1134/1.1690047. Russian original
7. Josephson, Paul R. (1987). "Early years of Soviet nuclear physics". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 43 (10): 36-39. Bibcode:1987BuAtS..43j..36J. doi:10.1080/00963402.1987.11459617.
8. Josephson, Paul R. (1991). Physics and Politics in Revolutionary Russia. University of California Press. p. 180. ISBN 9780520911475.
9. Rhodes, Richard (1995). Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. Simon & Schuster. p. 30. ISBN 0-684-80400-X.
10. Turkevich, John (January 1956). "Soviet Science in the Post-Stalin Era". The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 303: 143. doi:10.1177/000271625630300113. JSTOR 1032298.
11. "Алиханов Абрам Исаакович [Alikhanov Abram Isaakovich]". letopis.msu.ru (in Russian). Moscow State University. Archived from the original on 18 January 2019.
12. Gubarev, Vladimir (2004). "Белый архипелаг. Новые неизвестные страницы "Атомного проекта СССР" [The White Archipelago. New Unknown Pages of the "Atomic Project of the USSR"]". Nauka i Zhizn (1). Абрам Исаакович Алиханов - один из лидеров "Атомного проекта СССР".
13. Holloway, David (May 1981). "Entering the Nuclear Arms Race: The Soviet Decision to Build the Atomic Bomb, 1939-45". Social Studies of Science. 11 (2): 159–197. doi:10.1177/030631278101100201. JSTOR 284865.
14. Medvedev, Zhores A. (2000). Coates, Ken (ed.). "Stalin and the Atomic Bomb" (PDF). The Spokesman. Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation (67): 50–65. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-04-18.
15. "К 65-летию атомной отрасли – Хроника создания советской атомной бомбы [To the 65th anniversary of the nuclear industry: Timeline of the creation of the Soviet atomic bomb]". mephi.ru (in Russian). National Research Nuclear University. 14 February 2010. Archived from the original on 6 June 2015.
16. "Soviet Atomic Program - 1946". atomicheritage.org. Atomic Heritage Foundation. June 5, 2014. Archived from the original on 5 October 2019.
17. Abov, Yu. G. (October 2006). "On the history of the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEP, Moscow)". Physics of Atomic Nuclei. 69 (10): 1631–1656. Bibcode:2006PAN....69.1631A. doi:10.1134/S1063778806100012.
18. Mikhailov, V. N.; Goncharov, G. A. (April 1999). "I. V. Kurchatov and the development of nuclear weapons in the USSR". Atomic Energy. 86 (4): 266–282. doi:10.1007/BF02673142.
19. Tsukerman, I. S. "Академик А.И.Алиханов – основатель ИТЭФ: Атомный проект и организация Лаборатории № 3 – ТТЛ" (PDF). itep.ru (in Russian). Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics. p. 2.
20. Shifman, M. (2001). "Editor's Comments: List of Names". In Shifman, Mikhail A. (ed.). At the Frontier of Particle Physics: Handbook of QCD. Volume 1. World Scientific. p. 53.
21. Vysotsky, M. I.; Dolgov, A. D.; Novikov, V. A. (2016). "70 years of ITEP: some theoretical results". Physics-Uspekhi. 59 (8): 787. Bibcode:2016PhyU...59..787V. doi:10.3367/UFNe.2015.12.037733. In December 1945, all the theoretical work of Laboratory No. 3 was put under the charge of Lev Davydovich Landau (1908-1968), and in 1946, Isaak Yakovlevich Pomeranchuk (1913-1966), his former student, became the head of the Theoretical Department. Until 1958, Landau collaborated with and was a regular seminar participant at ITEP.
22. "Померанчук Исаак Яковлевич (1913—1966) [Pomeranchuk Isaak Yakovlevich (1913-1966)]". biblioatom.ru (in Russian). Rosatom.
23. Ioffe, B. L.; Shvedov, O. V. (April 1999). "Heavy water reactors and nuclear power plants in the USSR and Russia: Past, present, and future". Atomic Energy. 86 (4): 295–304. doi:10.1007/BF02673145.
24. Cochran, Thomas B.; Norris, Robert S. (1991). "A First Look at the Soviet Bomb Complex" (PDF). Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 47 (4): 27. Bibcode:1991BuAtS..47d..25C. doi:10.1080/00963402.1991.11459972.
25. Egorov, Nikolai N.; Novikov, Vladimir M.; Parker, Frank L.; Popov, Victor K., eds. (2014). "Plutonium Production and Radiochemical Reprocessing of Spent Nuclear Fuel". The Radiation Legacy of the Soviet Nuclear Complex: An Analytical Overview. Routledge. p. 145. ISBN 9781134197149. The first heavy-water reactor, the 100-MW OK-180, was put into operation on 17 October 1951. The OK-180 reactor was decommissioned in 1965 and then disassembled.
26. Bukharin, Oleg; Von Hippel, Frank (2004). Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces. MIT Press. p. 95. ISBN 9780262661812.
27. "Soviet Starts the Most Powerful Atom Smasher; New Accelerator Generates Twice as Much Energy as Any Other in the World". The New York Times. October 20, 1967.
28. Tyurin, Nikolai (1 November 2003). "Forty years of high-energy physics in Protvino". CERN Courier. IOP Publishing. CERN.
29. Holloway, David (1994). Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956. Yale University Press. p. 38. ISBN 9780300066647.
30. Abov, Yuri G. (2004). "Автобиография А. И. Алиханова [Autobiography of A. I. Alikhanov]". Академик А. И. Алиханов: воспоминания, письма, документы [Academician A. I. Alikhanov: Memories, Letters, Documents] (in Russian). Moscow: Fizmatlit. p. 204. ISBN 5-9221-0478-0.
31. "Tigran Alikhanov". mosconsv.ru. Moscow Conservatory. Archived from the original on 14 May 2016.
32. Ioffe, Boris Lazarevich (2017). Atom Projects: Events And People. World Scientific. p. 114. ISBN 9789813146037.
33. Khalatnikov, Isaak M. (2012). From the Atomic Bomb to the Landau Institute: Autobiography. Top Non-Secret. Springer Science & Business Media. pp. 55-56. ISBN 9783642275616.
34. "Атомная мечта академика Абрама Алиханова [Atomic Dream of Academician Abram Alikhanov]". Novoe Vremya (in Russian). 22 July 2017. Archived from the original on 31 January 2020.
35. Zhimulyov, I. F.; Dubinina, L. G. (2005). "К 50-летию "Письма трёхсот" [To the 50th Anniversary of the "Letter of 300"" (PDF). Vestnik VOGiS (in Russian). Institute of Cytology and Genetics. 9 (1): 24. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-07-11. 75. Акад. А.И. Алиханов.
36. Zubok, Vladislav (2009). Zhivago's Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia. Harvard University Press. p. 393. ISBN 9780674054837. Among the anti-Lysenko physicists supporting genetics were Yakov Zeldovich, Andrei Sakharov, Arkady Migdal, Isaac Pomeranchuk, Vitaly Ginzburg, Moisei Markov, and Abram Alikhanov.
37. Orlov, Yuri (2010). "In Tribute: Yuri Orlov". Andrei Sakharov and Human Rights. Council of Europe Publishing. pp. 151-153. ISBN 9789287169471.
38. Orlov, Yuri F. (4 October 1996). "Science, Politics, and Human Rights". Physics and Society. 25 (4). American Physical Society. Archived from the original on 8 October 2018.
39. "Письмо 13-ти деятелей советской науки, литературы и искусства в Президиум ЦК КПСС против реабилитации И.В. Сталина". old.ihst.ru (in Russian). Vavilov Institute for the History of Natural Science and Technology, Russian Academy of Sciences. 25 March 1966. Archived from the original on 28 December 2019. 10. А.Алиханов (акад[емик])
40. Holloway, David (1999). "Physics, the State, and Civil Society in the Soviet Union". Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences. 30 (1): 179. doi:10.2307/27757823. JSTOR 27757823. ...a number of leading physicists: Ioffe, Alikhanov, Kapitsa, and Vavilov.
41. Craig, Campbell; Radchenko, Sergey (2008). The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War. Yale University Press. p. 50. ISBN 978-0-300-11028-9. Kurchatov’s efforts to bring the leading physicist Abram Alikhanov to Moscow...
42. Shifman, M. (2001). "Introduction". In Shifman, Mikhail A. (ed.). At the Frontier of Particle Physics: Handbook of QCD. Volume 1. World Scientific. p. 7. Ioffe was the student of Landau, Pomeranchuk and Alikhanov. These were the "fathers" of Soviet particle physics...
43. Kapitsa, P. (1990). "Peter Kapitsa: The Scientist Who Talked Back to Stalin". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 46 (3): 29. Bibcode:1990BuAtS..46c..26K. doi:10.1080/00963402.1990.11459810.
44. Orlov, Yuri (1991). Dangerous Thoughts: Memoirs of a Russian Life. W. Morrow. p. 101. ISBN 9780688104719.
45. Orlov, Y. F. (2013). "Snapshots from the 1950s". In Shifman, Mikhail (ed.). Under The Spell Of Landau: When Theoretical Physics Was Shaping Destinies. World Scientific. p. 384. ISBN 9789814436588.
46. "Ալիխանով Աբրահամ Իսահակի [Alikhanov Abraham Isahaki]". sci.am (in Armenian). National Academy of Sciences of Armenia.

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. PDF version
• 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.
• Frenkel, V. J. (1990). "Alikhanov, Abram Isaakovich". In Frederic L. Holmes (ed.). Dictionary of Scientific Biography Supplement II. 17. Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 15–16. ISBN 0-684-19177-6.