Abraham Alikhanian is widely recognized as one of the leading Soviet physicists who specialized in particle and nuclear physics. He also joined the atomic bomb project and led the development of heavy water reactors.

Alikhanian (Abram Alikhanov in Russian) was born on March 4, 1904, in Elizavetpol, the historical Armenian city of Gandzak (today Ganja, in Azerbaijan). His father was a railroad engineer in the Transcaucasus Railway. His younger brother Artem (1908-1978) was also a noted physicist. They had two sisters. His family lived in Alexandropol (today Gyumri) in 1912–13, where Alikhanian attended a commercial college. Then they moved to Tiflis (today Tbilisi), where they stayed until 1918, and returned to Alexandropol until the Turkish-Armenian war of 1920. After another move to Tiflis, he graduated from a commercial college in 1921.