Artem Isaakovich Alikhanian (24.06.1908—25.02.1978) was a Soviet physicist, a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1946) and an academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR (1943). He was born in Tbilisi. He was the brother of A. I. Alikhanov. He graduated from Leningrad University (1931). In 1930—41 he worked at the Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute. In 1943—73 he was director of the Yerevan Physics Institute and head of a department at Yerevan University. In 1946—60 he also headed the department of nuclear physics at the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute and the laboratory of elementary particles at the Physical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
His research concerned nuclear physics, the physics of cosmic rays and of elementary particles, and the theory and design of accelerators. Together with A. I. Alikhanov and M. S. Kozodaev he discovered in 1934 the internal conversion of gamma rays with the formation of electron-positron pairs, and with A. I. Alikhanov and L. A. Artsimovich he proved in 1936 that energy and momentum are conserved in the annihilation of an electron and a positron. He detected an intense flux of fast protons in cosmic radiation and the intense generation of protons by fast neutrons, discovered showers of a new type — the so-called narrow showers, obtained the first indications that particles exist with masses intermediate between the mass of the muon and that of the proton, put forward the idea that cosmic radiation contains a large number of unstable particles, and so on.
He studied the properties of elementary particles on accelerators, and built a 570-litre freon bubble chamber. He designed and directed the construction in Yerevan of the ARUS electron synchrotron at 6 billion eV, which came into operation in 1967. He worked on the creation of new methods of detecting high-energy particles and of measuring their momenta. He developed a new type of spark chamber — the track chamber (Lenin Prize, 1970).
USSR State Prizes (1941, 1948). He created a school of physicists (V. P. Dzhelepov, P. E. Spivak, G. M. Garibyan, N. M. Kocharyan, A. O. Vaisenberg, V. G. Kirillov-Ugryumov, M. S. Kozodaev and others).