Alexander Lvovich Mints (8.01.1895-29.12.1974) was a Soviet scientist in the field of radio electronics and accelerator technology, an academician (1958; corresponding member 1946). He was born in Rostov-on-Don. He studied (1914—17) at Moscow University, graduated from the Don University (1918) and, as an external student, from the Moscow Electrotechnical Institute of Communications Engineers (1932). In 1920—28 he served in the Red Army: commander of a radio battalion of the First Cavalry Army, he took part in the fighting on the fronts of the Civil War, and was head of the radio faculty and head of the radio laboratory of the Higher Military Signal School, and head of a research institute of communications. In 1928 — 43 he worked in the laboratories of the radio industry and on the construction of high-power radio stations. In 1946 he organised the Radio Engineering Laboratory of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which was transformed in 1957 into the Radio Engineering Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and of which he was director until 1970.
His work concerned radio engineering (radiotelegraphy, radiotelephony, broadcasting, high-power radio construction, radio electronics, electroacoustics) and accelerator technology (the building of accelerators and of the radio-electronic circuits for them). He designed and built radio stations: the 100-kilowatt station named after the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions (1929); the 500-kilowatt station named after the Comintern (1933); the 150-kilowatt station named after Kosior (1937); RV-96 (1938); and a 1,200-kilowatt station (1943). He was the scientific director of the development of the radio-electronic systems of large Soviet cyclic and linear accelerators, in particular the synchrophasotron for an energy of 10 GeV in the town of Dubna (Lenin Prize, 1959), the strong-focusing proton synchrotron for an energy of 7 GeV of the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics, and the Serpukhov proton synchrotron for 70 GeV.
of the Institute of High Energy Physics, a linear proton accelerator for an energy of 100 MeV and others. In 1961 he put forward a new principle of accelerator operation — the use of automatic regulation of the accelerator's parameters from information received from the beam of particles being accelerated (the principle of autocorrection). He directed the development of a cybernetic proton synchrotron for an energy of 1000 GeV; its 1 GeV model was put into operation in 1967 and fully confirmed the correctness of the principles laid at the basis of the accelerator project (1963). He substantiated (1969) the possibility of building a proton synchrotron for an energy of 4000 — 5000 GeV using superconducting magnets. In 1967 he proposed a new way of forming rotating relativistic electron rings in a vacuum.
He founded scientific schools in the fields of high-power radio construction and accelerator technology. Hero of Socialist Labour (1956). USSR State Prizes (1946, 1951). The A. S. Popov Gold Medal (1950).