Vladimir Ivanovich Arkharov (born 14.02.1907) is a Soviet physicist and an academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1965). He was born in Odessa. He graduated from the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute (1931). In 1928-32 he worked at the Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute, in 1932-34 and 1937-65 at the Urals Physico-Technical Institute in Sverdlovsk, in 1934-37 at the Gorky Physico-Technical Institute and in 1966-72 at the Donetsk Physico-Technical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR; since 1975 he has been head of a department at the Institute for Problems of Materials Science of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (Donetsk). In 1947-65 he was professor at Urals University and in 1966-79 at Donetsk University.
His main work concerned solid-state physics, metal physics and physical materials science. He studied the mechanisms of structural changes in solids. He introduced the idea of collective elementary acts and of the relay transfer of activation in diffusion and recrystallisation. He showed that a cluster mechanism of reaction diffusion is possible, through cooperative structural rearrangements in the layers of the reaction products. He constructed a structural picture of the process of gaseous corrosion. He developed new methods of protecting metals against wear and corrosion: gas chromising, the carbidisation of electrolytic chromium coatings, and composite electrolytic coatings. He studied the mechanism of martensitic transformations, the nature of the overheating of steel and of the appearance of specific types of fracture in it, and the mechanism of flake formation in steel. He introduced the idea of the quasi-equilibrium inhomogeneity of solids and of the intercrystalline internal adsorption of dissolved components and impurities. He detected the competition of adsorption-active impurities in alloys.