Andrei Sakharov

Dr. Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (, May 21 1921 – December 14 1989), was an eminent Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident and human rights activist. Sakharov was an advocate of civil liberties and reforms in the Soviet Union.

Life and career

Born in Moscow in 1921, he entered Moscow State University in 1938. Following evacuation in 1941 during the "Great Patriotic War", he graduated in Ashkhabad, in today's Turkmenistan. He was then assigned laboratory work in Ulyanovsk. He returned to Moscow in 1945 to study at the Theoretical Department of FIAN (the Physical Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences). He received his Ph.D. in 1947.

On World War II's end, Sakharov researched cosmic rays. In mid-1948 he participated in the Soviet atomic bomb project under Igor Kurchatov. The first Soviet atomic device was tested on August 29, 1949. After moving to Sarov in 1950, Sakharov played a key role in the next stage, the development of the hydrogen bomb. The first Soviet fusion device was tested on August 12, 1953, using what was called the Sloika design. In 1953, he received his D.Sc. degree, was elected a full member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, and was awarded the first of his three Hero of Socialist Labor titles. Sakharov continued to work at Sarov, playing a key role in the development of the first megaton-range Soviet hydrogen bomb using a design known as "Sakharov's Third Idea" in Russia and the Teller-Ulam design in the United States. It was first tested as RDS-37 in 1955. A larger variation of the same design which Sakharov worked on was the 50MT Tsar Bomba of October 1961, which was the most powerful device ever exploded.

He also proposed an idea for a controlled nuclear fusion reactor, the tokamak, which is still the basis for the majority of work in the area. Sakharov, in association with Igor Tamm, proposed confining extremely hot ionized plasma by torus shaped magnetic fields for controlling thermonuclear fusion that led to the development of the tokamak device.

Sakharov proposed the idea of induced gravity as an alternative theory of quantum gravity.

Turn to activism

From the late-1950s Sakharov had become concerned about the moral and political implications of his work. Politically active during the 1960s, Sakharov was against nuclear proliferation. Pushing for the end of atmospheric tests, he played a role in the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, signed in Moscow. In 1965 he returned to fundamental science and began working on cosmology but continued to oppose political discrimination.

The major turn in Sakharov’s political evolution started in 1967, when anti-ballistic missile defense became a key issue in US–Soviet relations. In a secret detailed letter to the Soviet leadership of July 21, 1967, Sakharov explains the need to "take the Americans at their word" and accept their proposal "for a bilateral rejection by the USA and the Soviet Union of the development of antiballistic missile defense", because otherwise an arms race in this new technology would increase the likelihood of nuclear war. He also asked permission to publish his manuscript (which accompanied the letter) in a newspaper to explain the dangers posed by this kind of defense. The government ignored his letter and refused to let him initiate a public discussion of ABM in the Soviet press.

In May 1968 he completed an essay, Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom, where the anti-ballistic missile defense is featured as a major threat of world nuclear war. After this essay was circulated in samizdat and then published outside the Soviet Union, Sakharov was banned from all military-related research and Sakharov returned to FIAN to study fundamental theoretical physics. In 1970 he was one of the founders of the Moscow Human Rights Committee and came under increasing pressure from the regime. He married a fellow human rights activist, Yelena Bonner, in 1972.

In 1973 he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He won the prize in 1975, although he was not allowed to leave the Soviet Union to collect it. His wife read his speech at the acceptance ceremony.

Sakharov's ideas on social development led him to put forward the principle of human rights as a new basis of all politics. In his works he declared that "the principle 'what is not prohibited is allowed' should be understood literally", denying the importance and validity of all moral or cultural norms not codified in the laws. He was arrested on January 22 1980, following his public protests against the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and was sent to internal exile to a city of Gorky, now Nizhny Novgorod, a closed city that was inaccessible to foreign observers.

Between 1980 to 1986, Sakharov was kept under tight Soviet police surveillance. In his memoirs he mentions that their apartment in Gorky was repeatedly subjected to searches and heists. He remained isolated but unrepentant until December 1986 when he was allowed to return to Moscow as Mikhail Gorbachev initiated the policies of perestroika and glasnost.

In 1988 Sakharov was given the International Humanist Award by the International Humanist and Ethical Union.

He helped to initiate the first independent legal political organizations and became prominent in the Soviet Union's growing political opposition. In March 1989, Sakharov was elected to the new parliament, the All-Union Congress of People's Deputies and co-led the democratic opposition.

Sakharov died of a heart attack in 1989 at the age of 68, and was interred in the Vostryakovskoye Cemetery in Moscow.

Influence

The Sakharov Prize, established in 1985 and awarded annually by the European Parliament for people and organizations dedicated to human rights and freedoms, was named in his honor.

Andrei Sakharov Archives

The Andrei Sakharov Archives and Human Rights Center, established at Brandeis University in 1993 are now housed at Harvard University.^*

Trivia

Sakharov and the "Sakharov Drive" were featured in Arthur C. Clarke's novel Odyssey Two.
Sakharov is mentioned briefly in Kurt Vonnegut's Timequake.
One of the Enterprise-D shuttlecraft in The Next Generation is named for him.
He may also be the inspiration for the name 'Prokhor Zakharov', the leader of the University of Planet in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
During the 1980s, the U.S. government named the street in front of what was then the main Soviet embassy building in midtown Washington, D.C., "Andrei Sakharov Place" as a form of protest against his 1980 arrest and detention. This applied to the block of 16th Street NW between L and M streets. The new embassy complex on Wisconsin Avenue was still under construction, as it was for many years.

Quotes

"In this pamphlet, advanced for discussion by its readers, the author has set himself the goal to present, with the greatest conviction and frankness, two theses that are supported by many people in the world. These are:
1. The division of mankind threatens it with destruction… Only universal cooperation under conditions of intellectual freedom and the lofty moral ideals of socialism and labor, accompanied by the elimination of dogmatism and pressure of the concealed interests of ruling classes, will preserve civilization…
2. The second basic thesis is that intellectual freedom is essential to human society — freedom to obtain and distribute information, freedom for open-minded and unfearing debate and freedom from pressure by officialdom and prejudices. Such a trinity of freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of people by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorship. Freedom of thought is the only guarantee of the feasibility of a scientific democratic approach to politics, economics and culture." (Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom, in ''The New York Times, July 22, 1968) ^*
"I foresee a universal information system (UIS), which will give everyone access at any given moment to the contents of any book that has ever been published or any magazine or any fact. The UIS will have individual miniature-computer terminals, central control points for the flood of information, and communication channels incorporating thousands of artificial communications from satellites, cables, and laser lines. Even the partial realization of the UIS will profoundly affect every person, his leisure activities, and his intellectual and artistic development. …But the true historic role of the UIS will be to break down the barriers to the exchange of information among countries and people." (Saturday Review/World, August 24, 1974)

References

Sakharov, Andrei, "Facets of a Life". 1991.
Babenyshev, Alexander, "On Sakharov". Russia, 1981.
Lozansky, Edward D., "Andrei Sakharov and Peace". 1985.
Drell, Sidney D., and Sergei P. Kapitsa, "Sahkarov Remembered". 1991
Gorelik,Gennady, with Antonina W. Bouis, "The World of Andrei Sakharov: A Russian Physicist's Path to Freedom". Oxford University Press, 2005

External links

The Andrei Sakharov Archives and Human Rights Center, established at Brandeis University in 1993, will soon cease to exist unless Congress and university officials act to save it.
Commemoration of the Sakharov Archives transfer to Harvard
Andrei Sakharov: Soviet Physics, Nuclear Weapons, and Human Rights. Web exhibit at the American Institute of Physics
Andrei Sakharov: Photo-chronology
"Andrey Dmitriyevich Sakharov". Timeline of Nobel Winners.
David Holloway on: Andrei Sakharov
Andrei Sakharov Museum in Moscow Virtual Tour
Annotated bibliography of Andrei Sakharov from the Alsos Digital Library

In Russian

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