Alexander Kossiakoff was born on June 26, 1914 in St. Petersburg, Russia. He immigrated to the United States in 1923, and received a BS degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1936 and a PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1938. Kossiakoff worked for the Allegheny Ballistics Laboratory during World War II, and in 1946 joined the staff of the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). He became Director of APL in 1969 and remained in that role until his retirement in 1980. In this interview, Kossiakoff discusses how he came to study and work at Johns Hopkins and some of the major initiatives at APL during his tenure. In this interview, Kossiakoff discusses how he came to study and work at Johns Hopkins and some of the major initiatives at APL during his tenure. This oral history is a part of the Mame Warren oral histories series.

A film produced by the U. S. Navy lists some recent defense research with benefits to civilians: raising research animals in sterile conditions; discovering unknown properties of metals by super heating and super cooling; researching man's reactions to motion; studying nuclear collisions and cosmic rays as alternative sources of power; creating heat with aluminum solar reflectors; studying solar chromosphere and solar activity; and developing computers, the cyclotron, fluid dynamics, surgical techniques, etc. A film by the U. S. Air Force then shows the by-products of their research: rayon and nylon tires, fiber A weather resistant fabric, stereoscopic strip camera for mapping large areas quickly, electric blankets and space heaters, and ground control approach (GCA) used at airports. The final message is that defense research and engineering funds pay dividends by providing improvements in daily living.