Anatoly Petrovich Alexandrov

Who was Anatoly Petrovich Alexandrov?

Anatoly Petrovich Alexandrov was a Soviet and Russian physicist, director of the Kurchatov Institute, academician and president of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. By the end of his life he had become the third most decorated man in the Soviet Union.

Anatoly Alexandrov was born on 13 February 1903 into the family of a prominent judge in the town of Tarascha, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire.

After his graduation in 1930, he was invited by Abram Ioffe to join him in Leningrad.

Alexandrov became prominent during World War II, when he devised in collaboration with Igor Kurchatov a method of demagnetizing ships to protect them from German mines. The method was effective by the end of 1941 and was in active use through the end of the war and afterwards. Both Alexandrov and Kurchatov worked at the Ioffe Institute by that time. Yevgeni Velikov said that Alexandrov was instrumental in developing the Soviet nuclear-powered fleet, both surface vessels and submarines. Alexandrov is a member of Communist Party since 1962.