Alexander Ilyich Akhiezer (born 31.X 1911) is a Soviet theoretical physicist and an academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1964). He was born in the town of Cherikov. He graduated from the Kiev Polytechnic Institute (1934). Since 1934 he has worked at the Kharkov Physico-Technical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (from 1938 as head of its theoretical department), and in 1940—75 he was also head of a department at Kharkov University.
His research concerned nuclear physics, quantum electrodynamics, elementary-particle physics, plasma physics, magnetohydrodynamics, the theory of solids and magnetism. He developed the theory of the scattering of a photon by a photon at high energies and the theory of the coherent scattering of a photon in the field of a nucleus.
Together with I. Ya. Pomeranchuk he carried out pioneering studies of the scattering of slow neutrons by crystals and predicted “cold” neutrons (1941), constructed the theory of resonance nuclear reactions (1948) and the theory of the diffraction scattering of fast charged particles by nuclei (1949). In 1955, with A. G. Sitenko, he predicted the effect of the diffraction splitting of the deuteron and gave its theory. He contributed to the theory of linear accelerators of electrons and of heavier particles. He developed the theory of radiative corrections to a number of quantum-electrodynamic effects at high energies. He carried out a large body of work on the electrodynamics of hadrons: in particular, with M. P. Rekalo, he formulated the equidistance rule for various electromagnetic characteristics of hadrons (1964), generalised the quark model to electromagnetic processes involving hadrons, and established the quark structure of the photon.
With his pupils he developed the electrodynamics of a plasma, and with Ya. B. Fainberg he predicted (1948) the beam instability of a plasma. With G. Ya. Lyubarsky and R. V. Polovin he formulated the condition of evolutionarity and established the criterion for the stability of magnetohydrodynamic waves.
He was the first to formulate (1946) the concept of magnons, on the basis of which he predicted (1956), together with V. G. Baryakhtar and S. V. Peletminsky, a new phenomenon, magnetoacoustic resonance, and constructed (1959) the theory of kinetic, relaxation and high-frequency processes in ferrodielectrics. He carried out fundamental work on the theory of the absorption of sound in dielectrics and metals. He developed (1957) the theory of the absorption of ultrasound in metals (together with M. I. Kaganov and G. Ya. Lyubarsky), which began the study of electron acoustics in the USSR.
He created a school of theoretical physicists (V. G. Baryakhtar, Ya. B. Fainberg, D. V. Volkov, S. V. Peletminsky, A. G. Sitenko and others). The L. I. Mandelstam Prize (1948).