[1] His father Vladimir Aleksandrovich Altshuler (1882–1965) was a lawyer and former revolutionary who worked at the Soviet Ministry of Finances.

During those World War II years he defended a PhD (1943)[1] and developed a pulsed X-ray radiography method for real-time analysis of damage induced by a projectile to the tank armor, receiving the State Prize for this work in 1946.

Twenty years later he became a Chief Researcher at the Institute for High Energy Densities of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

In his late years Altshuler published several books and articles on high-pressure science and on the history of the Soviet Atomic Project.

Boris became a notable physicist and besides his scientific research published a series of historical books related to Andrei Sakharov, his father and the Soviet atomic bomb project.