Igor Vasilevich Kurchatov
Igor Kurchatov (И́горь Васи́льевич Курча́тов, born January 8, 1903 in Chelyabinsk, died February 7, 1960 in Moscow) was the leader of the Soviet Atomic bomb program. He studied physics at Crimea State University and ship building at the Polytechnical Institute in Petrograd. In 1925 he moved to the Physicotechnical Institute, where he worked (under Abram Fedorovich Ioffe) on various problems connected with radioactivity. In 1932 he received funding for his own nuclear science research team, which built the Soviet Union's first cyclotron.
When, in 1941, war broke out between Germany and the USSR, Kurchatov switched his researches first to protecting shipping from magnetic mines, and later to tank armour. In 1943 the NKVD obtained a copy of a secret British report concerning the feasability of atomic weapons, which led Stalin to order the commencement of a Soviet programme (albeit with very limited resources). Ioffe recommended Kurchatov to Molotov, and Kurchatov was appointed director of the nascent programme later that year. The bomb project remained a relatively low priority until information from spy Klaus Fuchs and later the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki goaded Stalin into action. Stalin ordered Kurchatov to produce a bomb by 1948, and put the ruthless Lavrenty Beria in direct command of the project. The project took over the town of Sarov in the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast on the Volga, and renamed it Arzamas-16. The team (which included other prominent Soviet nuclear scientists such as Julii Borisovich Khariton and Iakov Borisovich Zeldovich) was assisted both by public disclosures made by the US government and by further information supplied by Fuchs, but Kurchatov (fearing the intelligence was misinformation) insisted his scientists retest everything themselves.
On August 29th 1949 the team detonated its initial test device (a plutonium implosion bomb) at Semipalatinsk; Kurchatov later remarked that his main feeling at the time was one of relief, as he was confident that had the weapon failed, Stalin would have had him shot.
Kurchatov subsequently worked on the Soviet hydrogen bomb program (1953), but later worked for the peaceful use of nuclear technology, and advocated against nuclear bomb tests.
During the A-bomb programme, Kurchatov swore he wouldn't cut his beard until the program succeeded, and he continued to wear a large beard (often cut into eccentric styles) for the remainder of his life, earning him the nickname "The Beard".
References
- Dark Sun: The Making Of The Hydrogen Bomb by Richard Rhodes (ISBN 0684824140)
- PBS documentary Citizen Kurchatov
Referenced By
Element 104 | Rutherfordium | Unnilquadium
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