Albert Nikiforovich Tavkhelidze (born 16.12.1930) — a Soviet theoretical physicist, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Georgian SSR (1974). Born in Tbilisi. He graduated from Tbilisi University (1953). In 1956 — 70 he worked at the Laboratory of Theoretical Physics of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna (from 1964 as head of a department and deputy director). Since 1970 he has been director of the Institute for Nuclear Research of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and at the same time professor at Moscow University and head of the department of theoretical physics at the Institute of Mathematics of the Academy of Sciences of the Georgian SSR.
His work was in quantum field theory and the theory of elementary particles. Together with N. N. Bogolyubov and B. V. Struminsky he proposed (1965) a new quantum number — colour.
He contributed to the dynamical quark model of elementary particles, the theory of hadron interaction processes at high energies and large momentum transfers, the theory of self-similar asymptotics in deep inelastic processes on the basis of the general principles of quantum field theory, dynamical quasipotential equations in quantum field theory (the Logunov—Tavkhelidze equation), dispersion relations and equations for the processes of photoproduction of pions on nucleons, sum rules at finite energies, and the global duality of strong interactions.
USSR State Prize (1973).