Later he worked as an assistant at the Kiev Mining Institute as an electrician. He later worked as an electrical engineer at the Kiev Physicochemical Society under the Political Education and a high school teacher in the village of Belki, Kiev region. For several years, he combined his studies at the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of
Kiev University, where he studied from 1924 to 1930, with teaching physics and chemistry at school#79 in Kiev. After graduating from Faculty of Physics in Kiev University in 1930, he worked at the X-ray Physics Department in the
Kiev Institute of Health. After his graduation in 1930, he was invited by
Abram Ioffe to join him in
Leningrad. At
Leningrad Physicotechnical Institute, he developed a statistical theory of strength and doctoral dissertation - "Relaxation in Polymers" (1941). From the spring of 1931, he worked at the
Leningrad Polytechnic Institute, where he became a candidate, and then a professor of physical and mathematical sciences.
World War II Alexandrov became prominent during
World War II, when he devised in collaboration with
Igor Kurchatov a method of demagnetizing ships to protect them from German
naval mines, known as the LPTI system. On 9 August 1941, Alexandrov and Kurchatov arrived in
Sevastopol to organize work on equipping the
Black Sea Fleet ships with the system, and by the end of October it had been installed on more than 50 ships. At the same time, Alexksandrov and Kurchatov continued research to improve it. The method was effective by the end of 1941 and was in active use through the end of the war and afterwards. It was successfully used by the
Soviet Navy, during the
Siege of Sevastopol,
Siege of Leningrad, on the
Volga River during the
Battle of Stalingrad and in the
Baltic Sea campaigns.
Later career (1988) Both Alexandrov and Kurchatov worked at the
Ioffe Institute by that time (their laboratory separated from the Ioffe Institute and moved to Moscow in 1943 for the work on the
Soviet atomic bomb project). From 1946 to 1955, he was director of the
Institute for Physical Problems, where he was appointed to replace
Pyotr Kapitsa. In 1955, he became deputy director of the
Institute of Atomic Energy, and after the death of Kurchatov in 1960, he became its director. Alexandrov was a member of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1962. On the initiative of Alexandrov, power plants for the
nuclear icebreakers
Lenin,
Arktika, and
Sibir were developed. It was under the leadership of Alexandrov, that technical, organizational and production problems were solved in an unprecedentedly short time during the construction of the
USSR's first nuclear submarine with a nuclear propulsion system. As a result, in 1952-1972,
Sevmash mastered the serial production of submarines with a nuclear propulsion system and became the largest nuclear submarine shipbuilding center in the USSR and the world. At Sevmash, 163 combat submarines were built. In the 1970s, the company produced
Typhoon-class nuclear submarines, which entered into the
Guinness Book of Records as the largest submarines in the world. In the 1960s, on the initiative of Alexandrov, the largest
helium liquefaction plant was built in the USSR . This provided a wide front for fundamental research in the physics of low temperatures, as well as on the technical use of
superconductivity. He was the scientific supervisor for both of the Soviet Union's
nuclear reactor designs: the
VVER pressurized water reactor and the
RBMK graphite-moderated reactor. commemorating Alexandrov He was deeply affected by the
Chernobyl disaster, the worst nuclear accident in history. According to him: "To manage such an institute as the
IAE, the largest institute and the most difficult work, and at the same time take care of the Academy - I must say, it was extremely difficult. In the end it ended sadly. And when the Chernobyl accident happened, I believe that from that time both my life began to end, and my creative life." The accident subsequently prompted the
Soviet Government to review and suspend the ambitious nuclear power program. As principal designer of the RBMK reactor that exploded at Chernobyl, Alexandrov refused to concede that a design flaw contributed to the disaster. Alexandrov died of
cardiac arrest on 3 February 1994 in
Moscow. He is buried at the city's
Mitinskoe Cemetery. ==Personal life==