Andrei Sakharov

Andrei Sakharov (1921-1989), Soviet nuclear physicist, political dissident, and Nobel laureate. Andrei Dmitriyevich Sakharov was born in Moscow. He graduated from Moscow State University in 1942 and continued his studies during World War II, taking his doctorate in physics at the P. N. Lebedev Institute in 1947. From 1948 to 1956 he did research in controlled nuclear fusion, and with the Soviet physicist Igor Tamm, made a proposal that led to the construction of the Soviet hydrogen bomb. In 1953 he became a member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. After 1961, when he made a formal protest against the atmospheric testing of a hydrogen bomb by the USSR, his activities were increasingly directed towards political questions and less towards science. By 1968 he had virtually abandoned scientific research, becoming instead a spokesman for civil liberties in the USSR and for international disarmament and nuclear weapons control. For these activities Sakharov was awarded the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize, but the Soviet government would not permit him to go to Norway to accept it. Because of his political activities, he was exiled to Gorky in 1980. Sakharov was permitted to return to Moscow in December 1986. Elected to the new Congress of People's Deputies in April 1989, he remained a leading spokesman for human rights and political and economic reform until his death on December 14, 1989.