Throughout his lifetime Osipyan chaired numerous academic commissions, conferences and journal boards. From 1990 to 1993 he was president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP). In 2005 he was awarded Lomonosov Gold Medal of the Russian Academy. In an interview the year after, Osipyan summarized his creed in science: "All my life I was mining for experimental data. I am an experimenter, although I was trained in theory. In the Soviet age, creative and (most important) independent work was possible only in science. May I say that my choice was based on a will for freedom and independence."