He was the co-recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physics, with Vitaly Ginzburg and Anthony James Leggett, for theories about how matter can behave at extremely low temperatures.

From 1948 to 1965, he worked at the Institute for Physical Problems of the USSR Academy of Sciences, where he received his Ph.D. in 1951 for the theory of thermal diffusion in plasmas, and then his Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (a "higher doctorate") degree in 1955 for a thesis on quantum electrodynamics at high energies.

While in the US, Abrikosov was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2000, and in 2001, to be a foreign member of the Royal Society.

The accompanying arrangement of magnetic flux lines is called the Abrikosov vortex lattice.

Together with Lev Gor'kov and Igor Dzyaloshinskii, Abrikosov has written an iconic book on theoretical solid-state physics, which has been used to train physicists in the field for decades.

When he received the Nobel Prize, his research was focused on the origins of magnetoresistance, a property of some materials that change their resistance to electrical flow under the influence of a magnetic field.