by Acad. Yevgeny VELIKHOV, President of the National Research Center "Kurchatov Institute", Moscow

Anatoly Petrovich Alexandrov conjures up the image of Noah, a biblical patriarch who built an ark, in which he survived the Flood. Alexandrov, in fact, survived two floods... He came to us from the Silver Age of the early 20th century, a period of the great intellectual upsurge of Russia, of the efflorescence of her science, culture, literature and arts, a period of her booming industrial growth. Such precious character traits as inquisitiveness, decency and good will were part and parcel of his moral fabric. "The more you give, the more you take on the rebound." Alexandrov was clearly conscious of this abiding truth.

Born in the Ukraine in 1903, Alexandrov was a Kiev University graduate (Department of Physics and Mathematics).* He combined his regular university course with school teaching. While still there, in Kiev, he caught attention of Abram Ioffe, director of the Leningrad Institute of Physics and Technology (LFTI)**, who was eager to enlist young gifted men to his fold. Alexandrov was among them. This happened in 1930.

This is how Alexandrov turned up at LFTI. His first works over there dealt with the breakdown of dielectrics, demonstrating that the breakdown strength of thin films did not depend on their thickness and thus dashing the then current theory of solid state collision ionization. He pointed to the essential "weal points" of dielectrics, a finding that proved to be fruitful in subsequent studies, in particular, in what concerned the brittle failure of materials. This gave birth to the statistical brittle strength theory; evolved and validated experimentally, it still holds in the present physical theory of materials longevity.

* See: N. Ponomarev-Stepnoi, "At the Head of the Nuclear Branch", Science in Russia, No. 2, 2003.--Ed.

** See: B. Dyakov, "Fiztekh: a Multidimensional View", Science in Russia, No. 3, 2003.--Ed.

In the mid-1930s Alexandrov took up a new field of science, the polymer physics. This field was also of great practical value since synthetic polymers were making rapid headway as structural and insulation materials. That is why it was important to look closely into their mechanical and electrical characteristics. Few people, if any, remember that polystyrene, now in universal use, owes its hands-on application to Alexandrov. The elec-trophysical characteristics of this high-molecular compound proved unique in such booming fields as electrical and radio engineering.

Carried out in 1933 to 1944, these works laid a foundation for the present science of polymers. Making their way into monographs and manuals, this evidentiary material paved the way for many years ahead in the development of polymer physics in the Soviet Union. Elegant and neatly done, these research findings made Alexandrov famous overnight.

He could have certainly kept on the same track and proceed with his research. Yet there came precarious years prior to the Second World War. The air was rife with tension. Seamen were knocking at the doors of research institutions: our ships were not immune against magnetic mines, what with Nazi Germany pushing ahead with their production. Evaluating this problem in all its bearings, experts saw no way out. As Alexandrov recalled, smiling, many years after, "they were too good as specialists and understood the difficulties involved". But Alexandrov and his small team of research fellows turned to already in the first days of the Great Patriotic War (1941), and did the job. They coped fine.

Joining hands with seamen, they developed a system of degaussing and all-out defenses for the Navy. Alexandrov was in charge of the degaussing and demagnetization work; taking part were many LFTI research fellows, with Igor Kurchatov* among them; they made a signal contribution to the security of our Navy. Many ships and human lives were saved as a result. The hero city of Sebastopol has put up a memorial in honor of the men involved in that feat.

It was in the grim war years that Alexandrov showed his best both as a research scientist and a can-do organizer relying on his hands-on experience. His talents came in handy with the launching of the Soviet nuclear project, or the "uranium problem", as one would say in those days--the creation of an atomic weapon. Alexandrov, already a well-known physicist elected corresponding member of the national Academy of Sciences (1943),

* See: Ye. Velikhov, "He Dreamt of a Sun on Earth", Science in Russia, No. 1, 2003; Ye. Velikhov, "Pride of Russian Science", V. Sidorenko, "Pioneer of Soviet Atomic Power Engineering", Yu. Sivintsev, "A Few Unforgettable Meetings", Science in Russia, No. 6, 2012.--Ed.

joined the atomic project at Igor Kurchatov's invitation, and became one of its leading specialists heading large collectives of scientists and engineers.

In 1946 to 1955 Anatoly Alexandrov was heading the Institute of Physical Problems of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Under his guidance, apart from its regular tasks, this research center carried out a complex of works of great significance for solving the nuclear problem.

Looking back, you just wonder how Alexandrov and his generation could cope, negotiating enormous difficulties and hacking their way through at the cost of great effort and self-abnegation, and immense material losses (not only material losses for that matter).

In 1948 Alexandrov became deputy director of Laboratory No. 2 of the Academy of Sciences, a research center that changed its name subsequently: into the Laboratory of Measuring Instruments (1949), Institute of Atomic Energy (1956), and Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy (1960). In this capacity Alexandrov showed his paces as a talented and energetic researcher working with great abandon toward the development of our rocketry, Alexandrov showed his best side in managerial activities, too, being in charge of a big collective of designers, industrial engineers, material science experts, electricians... He knew all the nuts and bolts of the job, even down to minute details.

This way Alexandrov was able to get over so many stumbling blocks and snags. He would enlist the services of the best designers and engineers already at the early stages of work, and apply himself; he teamed up with allied industries, and kept in close touch with them. He got the hang of doing other things, for one, assimilating research findings in production. All that certainly could not but inspire trust.

Working hand in hand with Kurchatov, he laid a groundwork of the nation's rocketry. After Kurchatov's death in 1960, Alexandrov stepped into his shoes as head of the Institute of Atomic Energy, and for as long as thirty years was the mastermind of key programs in the development of nuclear setups of different designation-- for one, all the various reactors at nuclear power stations.

As research head, Alexandrov supervised the creation of water-cooled (water-moderated) core vessel power reactors as well as high-power channel-type uranium graphite reactors installed in most nuclear stations of the

Soviet Union. Such water-moderated reactors were built and are still at work in Bulgaria, Czechia, Finland and Slovakia. This line is developing with much success in Russia and abroad. Nuclear power stations with this type reactors have been put up to our designs in China and Iran, and they are under construction in India.

Alexandrov has made a major contribution in the making of research reactors in this country's science centers and also in the former Soviet republics and in other countries. Such reactors open up broad avenues in rocket building, neutron physics, radiation chemistry, biology and elsewhere. He masterminded the building of

industrial setups for the production of strategic nuclear materials like plutonium and tritium, and reactors for work in outer space.

Yet the Navy was his special concern. On Alexandrov's initiative and under his scientific guidance work was launched in the early 1950s on marine nuclear generators. This work proceeded apace both for men of war, surface ships and submarines alike, and for icebreakers of purely peaceful designation. Alexandrov supervised personally the launching of reactors on the world's first nuclear icebreaker Lenin and the first Soviet submarine Leninsky Komsomol. Next came the nuclear icebreakers Arctica, Siberia and Russia, and others that made it possible to expand navigation in the polar regions, bring it close to all-year-around. Dozens of submarines of three generations fitted with nuclear missiles became an essential part of the strategic parity between the two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States, in the "cold war" years. Alexandrov's signal contribution to the creation of the Russian nuclear fleet can scarcely be exaggerated.

Alexandrov was in his heyday as director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy (today the National Research Center "Kurchatov Institute") that he had been heading up to the year 1989. He expanded the application domain of nuclear energy for peace purposes (heat power plants, high-power generators for the chemical and metallurgical industries); he carried on research in plasma physics and in controlled thermonuclear fusion. Alexandrov devoted particular attention to basic research, for one, in molecular biology and in solid state physics.

The 1950s were a hard time for Soviet scientists, geneticists in particular. Together with Kurchatov, Alexandrov supported the frail shoots of the incipient science of molecular genetics. He saw great prospects of studies in the molecular mechanisms of heredity, and established a biological department at his research center (today, the RAS Institute of Molecular Genetics that has evolved into a leading center of molecular genetic and biological research).

Solid state physics, a field he took up still in his salad days, was his abiding interest. The progress of the nuclear science raised new questions in this field and in the same breath furnished original tools of research. In the 1960s Alexandrov set up a solid state physics department at the Kurchatov Institute with a wide spectrum of experimental and theoretical works.

Alexandrov had a spectacular hunch in foreseeing exactly the time when the results of fundamental research would make their way into engineering, and the renovated engineering provide further opportunities for knowledge acquisition. Thus, in the early 1960s he could predict great strides of applied superconductivity and initiated fundamental works in cryogenics and in technical uses of the phenomenon of superconductivity. And in the 1980s he made a decision on building a synchrotron radiation generator, well aware of its significance for fundamental research in physics and biology, and in applied problem solving.

As head of the giant research center involved with a variety of scientific and technical targets, Alexandrov took care of its adequate financing and building out. Above all, he sought to keep up the team spirit of his fellow workers. He inspired a creative and benevolent atmosphere there. He succeeded in all that thanks to his great charisma and good will to each and everyone. Committed to the work he was doing, Alexandrov was ever avid for knowledge. He was thumbs up for what was new and promising. It was all-important and thrilling to him to fathom a theory, to evaluate experimental facts and unorthodox approaches, be it some old and well-known problem.

He was respected among the scientific community owing to his broad mind, vibrant inquisitiveness and

fresh vision of any physical phenomenon or problem he came to deal with. Alexandrov would never grade people according to rank or position, their worth and merit came first. He was exacting and adamant in this regard. This singular set of qualities enabled Alexandrov to stay up to the mark for many years in getting on top of the hardest and great problems on a scale far beyond the capability of one, be it a very big, work collective.

All that enabled Alexandrov to combine his mammoth work as head of his research center in charge of major national research and development programs with public activities in the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, to which he was elected full member in 1953. In 1960 Alexandrov became a member of its presiding body (Presidium), and in 1975 was elected president of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, holding this post up until 1986. Relying on his most-rich experience in scientific guidance and in creating key technological projects, he sought to use this potential to the benefit of the nation's economy. He spent a good deal of effort in smashing all the various departmental barries, and often had to throw the weight of his authority on the scales.

Heading the national Academy of Sciences, Alexandrov did a remarkable lot in coordinating efforts of the Academies of Sciences of the USSR and of the constituent Soviet republics in the field of basic research, in developing its up-to-date material and technical base and in other areas like research instrument making and data processing automation. He sought to make an effective use of research findings in the country's social and economic problem solving. Brisk and always on his toes, he was all set to pull up stakes and go wherever something new and hitherto unknown came up so as to see about its possible practical applications. Alexandrov gave active support to work in developing an effective flu vaccine launched by the Konstantinov Institute of Nuclear Physics at Gatchina, Leningrad Region.

The Academy of Sciences became ever more active in engaging its potential to speed up the nation's scientific and technological advancement in such areas as microelectronics, aerospace technology, power engineering, medicine and farming. On Alexandrov's initiative joint projects were launched involving research institutions and industrial enterprises in key lines of metallurgy and engineering, such as powder metallurgy, laser-, plasma-and ion-mediated reinforcement of machine parts and mechanisms. All-out automation figured prominently in this list. True to the best traditions of home science, Alexandrov did all he could in advancing progressive trends.

His long life was not a bed of roses. He did not succeed always and everywhere. There were bitter setbacks and failures, too. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986 was a personal tragedy to Alexandrov. Although it occurred as a consequence of bad blunders in the regime of the station's operation, it became clear: reactors of that type were not foolproof against human errors, human irresponsibility and carelessness. Experts accomplished an enormous workload in eliminating the aftermath and in tightening the security of operating nuclear stations, and those under construction or at the gestation stage. Nuclear engineers devised essential principles for a new

generation of facilities the very physics of which excluded human errors.

But on that fateful day, April 26, 1986, Alexandrov had to face the fact: the runaway 1,000 MW reactor had its fuel core destroyed. It's hard indeed to grasp what happened. Yet one had to turn to and act in that touch-and-go situation. We can only guess what Alexandrov felt in those days; but what he did saw everybody. Here's his formula of action: "Nothing minor ever happens. The buck stops at us." He taught others to abide by this formula, too. His office at the Atomic Energy Institute turned into an emergency nerve center controlling the nation's research potential for tackling urgent problems that brooked no delay. The cream of the nation's scientists and engineers crossed the threshold of Alexan-drov's office to rush immediately to Chernobyl. Flashed from his office were microwave communications with tips and orders to all those concerned. Such messages were sent to Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk and other cities so as to marshal the potential of their research centers toward the objectives on hand. The Alexandrov office turned into a command post in charge of incoming and outgoing information, decisions, technical assignments and what not. Alexandrov visited Chernobyl now and again. His face-to-face meetings with the "eliminators", people involved directly with eliminating the aftermath, meant quite a lot to them. It was an acid test of one's ability to come on top, a warranty of success.

This man was a legend insofar as his work and leisure activities were concerned. He liked taking his rest in out-of-the-way places, far from the bustling "centers of civilization"--somewhere on a desert island in the Volga's delta, for he was fond of angling and hunting.

His capacity for work, his stamina and staying power was enormous. But this was no legend. Up to his last days (Alexandrov died on the third of February of 1994), holding the relatively quiet post of Director Emeritus of the Kurchatov Institute, he would not part with the job of his lifetime. He burned the midnight oil working in his office. Guests and visitors flocked in around him--research scientists from Moscow and Leningrad (St. Petersburg), seamen and people of various trades and professions. People came from far and wide, both from outlying districts of Russia and from former Soviet republics. They talked shop, discussing results and plans for the future. He was unable to live otherwise.

While paying tribute to his talents and decency, all of us, who rubbed elbows with him, hope his lifework will live on in the memory of coming generations as a worthy example of selfless dedication to science and tireless work to the benefit of the nation, for the glory of our Fatherland.

Illustrations from the archives of the laboratory of scientific-technical photography of the Kurchatov Institute and Alexandrov family archives