Andrej Sakharov
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Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (; 21 May 192114 December 1989) was a Soviet
physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...
and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, which he was awarded in 1975 for emphasizing
human rights Human rights are universally recognized Morality, moral principles or Social norm, norms that establish standards of human behavior and are often protected by both Municipal law, national and international laws. These rights are considered ...
around the world. Although he spent his career in physics in the Soviet program of nuclear weapons, overseeing the development of thermonuclear weapons, Sakharov also did fundamental work in understanding particle physics, magnetism, and physical cosmology. Sakharov is mostly known for his political activism for
individual freedom Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Individualists promote realizing one's goals and desires, valuing independence and self-reliance, and ad ...
,
human rights Human rights are universally recognized Morality, moral principles or Social norm, norms that establish standards of human behavior and are often protected by both Municipal law, national and international laws. These rights are considered ...
,
civil liberties Civil liberties are guarantees and freedoms that governments commit not to abridge, either by constitution, legislation, or judicial interpretation, without due process. Though the scope of the term differs between countries, civil liberties of ...
and reforms in the
Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
, for which he was deemed a
dissident A dissident is a person who actively challenges an established political or religious system, doctrine, belief, policy, or institution. In a religious context, the word has been used since the 18th century, and in the political sense since the 2 ...
and faced persecution from the Soviet establishment. In his memory, the
Sakharov Prize The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, commonly known as the Sakharov Prize, is an honorary award for individuals or groups who have dedicated their lives to the defence of human rights and freedom of thought. Named after Russian scienti ...
was established and is awarded annually by the
European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the two legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it ...
for people and organizations dedicated to human rights and freedoms.


Biography


Family background and early life

Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov was born in Moscow on 21 May 1921, to a
Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...
family. His father, Dmitri Ivanovich Sakharov, was a physics professor at the Second Moscow State University and an amateur pianist. His grandfather, Ivan, was a lawyer in the former
Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...
who had displayed respect for social awareness and humanitarian principles (including advocating the abolition of
capital punishment Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence (law), sentence ordering that an offender b ...
). Sakharov's mother, Yekaterina Alekseevna Sofiano, was a daughter of Aleksey Semenovich Sofiano, a general in the Tsarist Russian Army with
Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
heritage. Sakharov's parents and paternal grandmother, Maria Petrovna, largely shaped his personality; his mother and grandmother were members of the
Russian Orthodox Church The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC; ;), also officially known as the Moscow Patriarchate (), is an autocephaly, autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox Christian church. It has 194 dioceses inside Russia. The Primate (bishop), p ...
, although his father was a non-believer. When Andrei was about thirteen, he realized that he did not believe in God. However, despite being an
atheist Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...
, he did believe in a "guiding principle" that transcends the physical laws. After schooling, Sakharov studied physics at the
Moscow State University Moscow State University (MSU), officially M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University,. is a public university, public research university in Moscow, Russia. The university includes 15 research institutes, 43 faculties, more than 300 departments, a ...
in 1938 and, following evacuation in 1941 during the Eastern Front with
Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
, he graduated in
Aşgabat Ashgabat (Turkmen language, Turkmen: ''Aşgabat'') is the capital city, capital and largest city of Turkmenistan. It lies between the Karakum Desert and the Kopet Dag, Kopetdag mountain range in Central Asia, approximately 50 km (30  ...
in
Turkmenistan Turkmenistan is a landlocked country in Central Asia bordered by Kazakhstan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north, east and northeast, Afghanistan to the southeast, Iran to the south and southwest and the Caspian Sea to the west. Ash ...
. In 1943, he married Klavdia Alekseyevna Vikhireva, with whom he raised two daughters and a son. Klavdia would later die in 1969. In 1945, he joined the Theoretical Department of Physical Institute of the
Russian Academy of Sciences The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across the Russian Federation; and additional scientific and social units such ...
under
Igor Tamm Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm (; 8 July 1895 – 12 April 1971) was a Soviet Union, Soviet physicist who received the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov and Ilya Mikhailovich Frank, for their 1934 discovery and demon ...
in Moscow. In 1947, Sakharov was successful in defending his thesis for the
Doctor of Sciences A Doctor of Sciences, abbreviated д-р наук or д. н.; ; ; ; is a higher doctoral degree in the Russian Empire, Soviet Union and many Commonwealth of Independent States countries. One of the prerequisites of receiving a Doctor of Sciences ...
(lit. ''Doktor Nauk''), which covered the topic of
nuclear transmutation Nuclear transmutation is the conversion of one chemical element or an isotope into another chemical element. Nuclear transmutation occurs in any process where the number of protons or neutrons in the nucleus of an atom is changed. A transmutat ...
.


Soviet program of nuclear weapons

After
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, he researched
cosmic ray Cosmic rays or astroparticles are high-energy particles or clusters of particles (primarily represented by protons or atomic nuclei) that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the ...
s. In mid-1948 he participated in the
Soviet atomic bomb project The Soviet atomic bomb project was authorized by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union to develop nuclear weapons during and after World War II. Russian physicist Georgy Flyorov suspected that the Allied powers were secretly developing a " superwea ...
under
Igor Kurchatov Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov (; 12 January 1903 – 7 February 1960), was a Soviet physicist who played a central role in organizing and directing the former Soviet program of nuclear weapons, and has been referred to as "father of the Russian ...
and
Igor Tamm Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm (; 8 July 1895 – 12 April 1971) was a Soviet Union, Soviet physicist who received the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov and Ilya Mikhailovich Frank, for their 1934 discovery and demon ...
. Sakharov's study group at FIAN in 1948 came up with a second concept in August–September 1948.Zaloga, Steve (17 February 2002). ''The Kremlin's Nuclear Sword: The Rise and Fall of Russia's Strategic Nuclear Forces 1945–2000''. Smithsonian Books. . Adding a shell of natural, unenriched uranium around the deuterium would increase the deuterium concentration at the uranium-deuterium boundary and the overall yield of the device, because the natural uranium would capture neutrons and itself fission as part of the thermonuclear reaction. This idea of a layered fission-fusion-fission bomb led Sakharov to call it the ''sloika'', or layered cake. The first Soviet atomic device was tested on August 29, 1949. After moving to
Sarov Sarov () is a closed city, closed town in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russia. It was known as Gorkiy-130 (Горький-130) and Arzamas-16 (), after a (somewhat) nearby town of Arzamas,SarovLabsCreation of Nuclear Center Arzamas-16/ref> from 194 ...
in 1950, Sakharov played 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 A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H-bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lowe ...
in the United States. Before his ''Third Idea'', Sakharov tried a "layer cake" of alternating layers of fission and fusion fuel. The results were disappointing, yielding no more than a typical fission bomb. However the design was seen to be worth pursuing because deuterium is abundant and uranium is scarce, and he had no idea how powerful the US design was. Sakharov realised that in order to cause the explosion of one side of the fuel to symmetrically compress the fusion fuel, a mirror could be used to reflect the radiation. The details had not been officially declassified in Russia when Sakharov was writing his memoirs, but in the Teller–Ulam design, soft X-rays emitted by the fission bomb were focused onto a cylinder of lithium deuteride to compress it symmetrically. This is called
radiation implosion Radiation implosion is the compression of a target by the use of high levels of electromagnetic radiation. The major use for this technology is in fusion bombs and inertial confinement fusion research. History Radiation implosion was first deve ...
. The Teller–Ulam design also had a secondary fission device inside the fusion cylinder to assist with the compression of the fusion fuel and generate neutrons to convert some of the lithium to tritium, producing a mixture of deuterium and tritium. Sakharov's idea was first tested as
RDS-37 RDS-37 () was the Soviet Union's first two-stage hydrogen bomb, first tested on 22 November 1955. The weapon had a nominal yield of approximately 3 megatons. It was scaled down to 1.6 megatons for the live test. Leading to the RDS-37 The R ...
in 1955. A larger variation of the same design which Sakharov worked on was the 50 Mt
Tsar Bomba The Tsar Bomba (code name: ''Ivan'' or ''Vanya''), also known by the alphanumerical designation "AN602", was a Thermonuclear weapon, thermonuclear aerial bomb, and by far the most powerful nuclear weapon ever created and tested. The Soviet phy ...
of October 1961, which was the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated. Sakharov saw "striking parallels" between his fate and those of
J. Robert Oppenheimer J. Robert Oppenheimer (born Julius Robert Oppenheimer ; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physics, theoretical physicist who served as the director of the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World ...
and
Edward Teller Edward Teller (; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian and American Theoretical physics, theoretical physicist and chemical engineer who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" and one of the creators of ...
in the US. Sakharov believed that in this "tragic confrontation of two outstanding people", both deserved respect, because "each of them was certain he had right on his side and was morally obligated to go to the end in the name of truth." While Sakharov strongly disagreed with Teller over nuclear testing in the atmosphere and the
Strategic Defense Initiative The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic nuclear missiles. The program was announced in 1983, by President Ronald Reagan. Reagan called for a ...
, he believed that American academics had been unfair to Teller's resolve to get the H-bomb for the United States since "all steps by the Americans of a temporary or permanent rejection of developing thermonuclear weapons would have been seen either as a clever feint, or as the manifestation of stupidity. In both cases, the reaction would have been the same – avoid the trap and immediately take advantage of the enemy's stupidity." Sakharov never felt that by creating nuclear weapons he had "known sin", in Oppenheimer's expression. He later wrote:


Support for peaceful use of nuclear technology

In 1950 he proposed an idea for a controlled
nuclear fusion Nuclear fusion is a nuclear reaction, reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei combine to form a larger nuclei, nuclei/neutrons, neutron by-products. The difference in mass between the reactants and products is manifested as either the rele ...
reactor, the
tokamak A tokamak (; ) is a device which uses a powerful magnetic field generated by external magnets to confine plasma (physics), plasma in the shape of an axially symmetrical torus. The tokamak is one of several types of magnetic confinement fusi ...
, based on Oleg Lavrentiev's idea. Sakharov, in association with Tamm, proposed confining extremely hot ionized plasma by
torus In geometry, a torus (: tori or toruses) is a surface of revolution generated by revolving a circle in three-dimensional space one full revolution about an axis that is coplanarity, coplanar with the circle. The main types of toruses inclu ...
shaped
magnetic field A magnetic field (sometimes called B-field) is a physical field that describes the magnetic influence on moving electric charges, electric currents, and magnetic materials. A moving charge in a magnetic field experiences a force perpendicular ...
s for controlling
thermonuclear fusion Nuclear fusion is a reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei combine to form a larger nuclei, nuclei/neutron by-products. The difference in mass between the reactants and products is manifested as either the release or absorption of ener ...
that led to the development of the tokamak device.


Magneto-implosive generators

In 1951 he invented and tested the first
explosively pumped flux compression generator An explosively pumped flux compression generator (EPFCG) is a device used to generate a high-power electromagnetic pulse by compressing magnetic flux using high explosives. EPFCGs are physically destroyed during operation, making them single-us ...
s, compressing magnetic fields by
explosives An explosive (or explosive material) is a reactive substance that contains a great amount of potential energy that can produce an explosion if released suddenly, usually accompanied by the production of light, heat, sound, and pressure. An exp ...
. He called these devices MK (for ''MagnetoKumulative'') generators. The radial MK-1 produced a pulsed magnetic field of 25 megagauss (2500 teslas). The resulting helical MK-2 generated 1000 million amperes in 1953. Sakharov then tested a MK-driven "plasma cannon" where a small aluminum ring was vaporized by huge eddy currents into a stable, self-confined toroidal
plasmoid A plasmoid is a coherent structure of Plasma (physics), plasma and magnetic fields. Plasmoids have been proposed to explain natural phenomena such as ball lightning, magnetic bubbles in the magnetosphere, and objects in cometary tails, in the so ...
and was accelerated to 100 km/s. Sakharov later suggested replacing the copper coil in MK generators with a large superconductor
solenoid upright=1.20, An illustration of a solenoid upright=1.20, Magnetic field created by a seven-loop solenoid (cross-sectional view) described using field lines A solenoid () is a type of electromagnet formed by a helix, helical coil of wire whos ...
to magnetically compress and focus underground nuclear explosions into a
shaped charge A shaped charge, commonly also hollow charge if shaped with a cavity, is an explosive charge shaped to focus the effect of the explosive's energy. Different types of shaped charges are used for various purposes such as cutting and forming metal, ...
effect. He theorized this could focus 1023
proton A proton is a stable subatomic particle, symbol , Hydron (chemistry), H+, or 1H+ with a positive electric charge of +1 ''e'' (elementary charge). Its mass is slightly less than the mass of a neutron and approximately times the mass of an e ...
s per second on a 1 mm2 surface.


Particle physics and cosmology

After 1965 Sakharov returned to
fundamental science Basic research, also called pure research, fundamental research, basic science, or pure science, is a type of scientific research with the aim of improving scientific theories for better understanding and prediction of natural or other phenome ...
and began working on
particle physics Particle physics or high-energy physics is the study of Elementary particle, fundamental particles and fundamental interaction, forces that constitute matter and radiation. The field also studies combinations of elementary particles up to the s ...
and
physical cosmology Physical cosmology is a branch of cosmology concerned with the study of cosmological models. A cosmological model, or simply cosmology, provides a description of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of the universe and allows study of fu ...
. Translated as: Translated as: Dedicated to the 30th anniversary of
N. N. Bogolyubov Nikolay Nikolayevich (Mykola Mykolayovych) Bogolyubov (; ; 21 August 1909 – 13 February 1992) was a Soviet Union, Soviet, Ukraine, Ukrainian and Russia, Russian mathematician and theoretical physics, theoretical physicist known for a signifi ...
.
He tried to explain the
baryon asymmetry In physical cosmology, the baryon asymmetry problem, also known as the matter asymmetry problem or the matter–antimatter asymmetry problem, is the observed imbalance in baryonic matter (the type of matter experienced in everyday life) and an ...
of the universe; in that regard, he was the first to give a theoretical motivation for
proton decay In particle physics, proton decay is a hypothetical form of particle decay in which the proton decays into lighter subatomic particles, such as a neutral pion and a positron. The proton decay hypothesis was first formulated by Andrei Sakharov ...
. Proton decay was suggested by Wigner in 1949 and 1952. Proton decay experiments had been performed since 1954 already. Sakharov was the first to consider CPT-symmetric events occurring ''before'' the
Big Bang The Big Bang is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models based on the Big Bang concept explain a broad range of phenomena, including th ...
:
We can visualize that neutral spinless maximons (or photons) are produced at ''t'' < 0 from contracting matter having an excess of antiquarks, that they pass "one through the other" at the instant ''t'' = 0 when the density is infinite, and decay with an excess of quarks when ''t'' > 0, realizing total CPT symmetry of the universe. All the phenomena at t < 0 are assumed in this hypothesis to be CPT reflections of the phenomena at t > 0. Translated as: Republished as
His legacy in this domain are the famous conditions named after him: Baryon number violation, C-symmetry and CP-symmetry violation, and interactions out of thermal equilibrium. Sakharov was also interested in explaining why the curvature of the universe is so small. This led him to consider cyclic models, where the universe oscillates between contraction and expansion phases. Translated as: Translated as: In those models, after a certain number of cycles the curvature naturally becomes infinite even if it had not started this way: Sakharov considered three starting points, a flat universe with a slightly negative cosmological constant, a universe with a positive curvature and a zero cosmological constant, and a universe with a negative curvature and a slightly negative cosmological constant. Those last two models feature what Sakharov calls a reversal of the time arrow, which can be summarized as follows: He considers times t > 0 after the initial Big Bang singularity at t = 0 (which he calls "Friedman singularity" and denotes Φ) as well as times t < 0 before that singularity. He then assumes that entropy increases when time increases for t > 0 as well as when time decreases for t < 0, which constitutes his reversal of time. Then he considers the case when the universe at t < 0 is the image of the universe at t > 0 under CPT symmetry but also the case when it is not so: the universe has a non-zero CPT charge at t = 0 in this case. Sakharov considers a variant of this model where the reversal of the time arrow occurs at a point of maximum entropy instead of happening at the singularity. In those models there is no dynamic interaction between the universe at t < 0 and t > 0. In his first model the two universes did not interact, except via local matter accumulation whose density and pressure become high enough to connect the two sheets through a bridge without spacetime between them, but with a continuity of geodesics beyond the Schwarzschild radius with no singularity, allowing an exchange of matter between the two conjugated sheets, based on an idea after
Igor Dmitriyevich Novikov Igor Dmitriyevich Novikov (; born November 10, 1935) is a Russian (and former Soviet) theoretical astrophysicist and cosmologist. Novikov put forward the idea of white holes in 1964. He also formulated the Novikov self-consistency principle i ...
. Novikov called such singularities a ''collapse'' and an ''anticollapse'', which are an alternative to the couple
black hole A black hole is a massive, compact astronomical object so dense that its gravity prevents anything from escaping, even light. Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will form a black hole. Th ...
and
white hole In general relativity, a white hole is a hypothetical region of spacetime and Gravitational singularity, singularity that cannot be entered from the outside, although energy, matter, light and information can escape from it. In this sense, it is ...
in the
wormhole A wormhole is a hypothetical structure that connects disparate points in spacetime. It can be visualized as a tunnel with two ends at separate points in spacetime (i.e., different locations, different points in time, or both). Wormholes are base ...
model. Sakharov also proposed the idea of induced gravity as an alternative theory of
quantum gravity Quantum gravity (QG) is a field of theoretical physics that seeks to describe gravity according to the principles of quantum mechanics. It deals with environments in which neither gravitational nor quantum effects can be ignored, such as in the v ...
. Translated as:


Turn to activism

Since 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 Nuclear proliferation is the spread of nuclear weapons to additional countries, particularly those not recognized as List of states with nuclear weapons, nuclear-weapon states by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, commonl ...
. Pushing for the end of atmospheric tests, he played a role in the 1963
Partial Test Ban Treaty The Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT), formally known as the 1963 Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water, prohibited all nuclear weapons testing, test detonations of nuclear weapons except for those co ...
, signed in Moscow. Sakharov was also involved in an event with political consequences in 1964, when the
Soviet Academy of Sciences The Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union was the highest scientific institution of the Soviet Union from 1925 to 1991. It united the country's leading scientists and was subordinated directly to the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (un ...
nominated for full membership Nikolai Nuzhdin, a follower of
Trofim Lysenko Trofim Denisovich Lysenko (; , ; 20 November 1976) was a Soviet agronomist and scientist.''An ill-educated agronomist with huge ambitions, Lysenko failed to become a real scientist, but greatly succeeded in exposing of the “bourgeois enemies o ...
(initiator of the Stalin-supported anti-genetics campaign
Lysenkoism Lysenkoism ( ; ) was a political campaign led by the Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko against genetics and science-based agriculture in the mid-20th century, rejecting natural selection in favour of a form of Lamarckism, as well as expanding upon ...
). Contrary to normal practice, Sakharov, a member of the academy, publicly spoke out against full membership for Nuzhdin and held him responsible for "the defamation, firing, arrest, even death, of many genuine scientists." In the end, Nuzhdin was not elected, but the episode prompted Nikita Khrushchev to order the
KGB The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...
to gather kompromat, compromising material on Sakharov. In 1966 Sakharov was one of the signatories on the Letter of the Twenty Five regarding the inadmissibility of "partial or indirect rehabilitation of Joseph Stalin". The major turn in Sakharov's political evolution came in 1967, when anti-ballistic missile defense became a key issue in Soviet Union–United States relations, US–Soviet relations. In a secret detailed letter to the Soviet leadership of July 21, 1967, Sakharov explained 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 an arms race in the new technology would otherwise 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 that kind of defense. The government ignored his letter and refused to let him initiate a public discussion of ABMs in the Media of the Soviet Union, Soviet press. Since 1967, after the Six-Day War, Six Day War and the beginning of the Arab–Israeli conflict, Arab-Israeli conflict, he actively supported Israel, as he reported more than once in the press, and also maintained friendly relations with refuseniks who later made aliyah. In May 1968, Sakharov completed an essay, "Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom". He described the anti-ballistic missile defense as a major threat of world nuclear war. After the essay was circulated in ''samizdat'' and then published outside the Soviet Union, Sakharov was banned from conducting any military-related research and returned to FIAN to study fundamental theoretical physics. For 12 years, until his exile to Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod) in January 1980, Sakharov assumed the role of a widely recognized and open dissident in Moscow. He stood vigil outside closed courtrooms, wrote appeals on behalf of more than 200 individual prisoners, and continued to write essays about the need for democratization. In 1970, Sakharov was among the three founding members of the Committee on Human Rights in the USSR, along with Valery Chalidze and Andrei Tverdokhlebov. The Committee wrote appeals, collected signatures for petitions and succeeded in affiliating with several international human rights organizations. Its work was the subject of many KGB reports and brought Sakharov under increasing pressure from the government. Sakharov married a fellow human rights activist, Yelena Bonner, in 1972. By 1973, Sakharov was meeting regularly with Western correspondents and holding press conferences in his apartment. He appealed to the US Congress to approve the 1974 Jackson-Vanik Amendment to a trade bill, which coupled trade tariffs to the Kremlin's willingness to allow freer emigration for Soviet Jews.


Attacked by Soviet establishment from 1972

In 1972, Sakharov became the target of sustained pressure from his fellow scientists in the Soviet Academy of Sciences and the Soviet press. The writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn came to his defence. In 1973 and 1974, the Soviet media campaign continued, targeting both Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn for their pro-Western, anti-socialist positions. Sakharov later described that it took "years" for him to "understand how much substitution, deceit, and lack of correspondence with reality there was" in the Soviet ideals. "At first I thought, despite everything that I saw with my own eyes, that the Soviet State was a breakthrough into the future, a kind of prototype for all countries". Then he came, in his words, to "the theory of symmetry: all governments and regimes to a first approximation are bad, all peoples are oppressed, and all are threatened by common dangers.": 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 'Everything which is not forbidden is allowed, what is not prohibited is allowed' should be understood literally", and defied what he saw as unwritten ideological rules imposed by the Communist Party on the society in spite of a democratic Soviet Constitution (1936): In a letter written from exile, he cheered up a fellow physicist and free market advocate with the words: "Fortunately, the future is unpredictable and also – because of quantum effects – uncertain." For Sakharov, the indeterminacy of the future supported his belief that he could and should take personal responsibility for it.


Nobel Peace Prize (1975)

In 1973, Sakharov was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and in 1974, he was awarded the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. Sakharov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975. The Norwegian Nobel Committee called him "a spokesman for the conscience of mankind". In the words of the Nobel Committee's citation: "In a convincing manner Sakharov has emphasised that Man's inviolable rights provide the only safe foundation for genuine and enduring international cooperation." Sakharov was not allowed to leave the Soviet Union to collect the prize. His wife, Yelena Bonner, read his speech at the ceremony in Oslo, Norway.Y.B. Sakharov
Acceptance Speech
Nobel Peace Prize, Oslo, Norway, December 10, 1975.
Y.B. Sakharov

Sakharov's Nobel Lecture, Nobel Peace Prize, Oslo, Norway, December 11, 1975.
On the day the prize was awarded, Sakharov was in Vilnius, where the human rights activist Sergei Kovalev was being tried. In his Nobel lecture, "Peace, Progress, Human Rights", Sakharov called for an end to the arms race, greater respect for the environment, international cooperation, and universal respect for human rights. He included a list of prisoner of conscience, prisoners of conscience and political prisoners in the Soviet Union and stated that he shared the prize with them. By 1976, the head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, was prepared to call Sakharov "Domestic Enemy Number One" before a group of KGB officers.


Internal exile (1980–1986)

Sakharov was arrested on 22 January 1980, following his public protests against the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979, and was sent to the city of Gorky, now Nizhny Novgorod, a city that was off limits to foreigners. Between 1980 and 1986, Sakharov was kept under Soviet police surveillance. In his memoirs, he mentioned that their apartment in Gorky was repeatedly subjected to searches and heists. Sakharov was named the 1980 Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association. In May 1984, Sakharov's wife, Yelena Bonner, was detained, and Sakharov began a hunger strike, demanding permission for his wife to travel to the United States for heart surgery. He was forcibly hospitalized and forced feeding, force-fed. He was held in isolation for four months. In August 1984, Bonner was sentenced by a court to five years of exile in Gorky. In April 1985, Sakharov started a new hunger strike for his wife to travel abroad for medical treatment. He again was taken to a hospital and force-fed. In August, the Politburo discussed what to do about Sakharov. He remained in the hospital until October 1985, when his wife was allowed to travel to the United States. She had heart surgery in the United States and returned to Gorky in June 1986. In December 1985, the
European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the two legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it ...
established the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, to be given annually for outstanding contributions to human rights. On 19 December 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev, who had initiated the policies of perestroika and glasnost, called Sakharov to tell him that he and his wife could return to Moscow.


Political leader

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 1989 Soviet Union legislative election, was elected to the new parliament, the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union, All-Union Congress of People's Deputies and co-led the democratic opposition, the Inter-Regional Deputies Group. In November the head of the KGB reported to Gorbachev on Sakharov's encouragement and support for the coal miners' strike in Vorkuta. In December 1988, Sakharov visited Armenia and Azerbaijan on a fact-finding mission. He concluded, "For Azerbaijan the issue of Karabakh is a matter of ambition, for the Armenians of Karabakh, it is a matter of life and death".


Death

Soon after 9 p.m. on 14 December 1989, Sakharov went to his study to take a nap before preparing an important speech he was to deliver the next day in the Congress. His wife went to wake him at 11 p.m. as he had requested but she found Sakharov dead on the floor. According to the notes of Yakov Rapoport, a senior pathologist present at the autopsy, it is most likely that Sakharov died of an heart arrhythmia, arrhythmia consequent to dilated cardiomyopathy at the age of 68. He was interred in the Vostryakovskoye Cemetery in Moscow.


Influence


Memorial prizes

The Sakharov Prize, Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought was established in 1988 by the
European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the two legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it ...
in his honour, and is the highest tribute to human rights endeavours awarded by the European Union. It is awarded annually by the parliament to "those who carry the spirit of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov"; to "Laureates who, like Sakharov, dedicate their lives to peaceful struggle for human rights." An Andrei Sakharov Prize (APS), Andrei Sakharov prize has also been awarded by the American Physical Society every second year since 2006 "to recognize outstanding leadership and/or achievements of scientists in upholding human rights". The Andrei Sakharov Prize for Writer's Civic Courage was established in October 1990. In 2004, with the approval of Yelena Bonner, an annual Sakharov Prize for journalism was established for reporters and commentators in Russia. Funded by former Soviet dissident Pyotr Vins, now a businessman in the US, the prize is administered by the Glasnost Defence Foundation in Moscow. The prize "for journalism as an act of conscience" has been won over the years by famous journalists such as Anna Politkovskaya and young reporters and editors working far from Russia's media capital, Moscow. The 2015 winner was Yelena Kostyuchenko.


Andrei Sakharov Archives and Human Rights Center

The Andrei Sakharov Archives and Human Rights Center, established at Brandeis University in 1993, are now housed at Harvard University.Harvard University. KGB file of Sakharov
The documents from that archive were published by the Yale University Press in 2005.The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov. (edited by Joshua Rubenstein and Alexander Gribanov), New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005; These documents are available online.The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov
, online version with original texts and the English translations in English and in Russian (text version in Windows-1251 character encoding and the pictures of the original pages).
Most of documents of the archive are letters from the head of the
KGB The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...
to the Central Committee about activities of Soviet dissidents and recommendations about the interpretation in newspapers. The letters cover the period from 1968 to 1991 (Brezhnev stagnation). The documents characterize not only Sakharov's activity, but that of other dissidents, as well as that of highest-position apparatchiks and the KGB. No Russian equivalent of the KGB archive is available.


Legacy and remembrance


Places

* A public Sakharov Center operated in Moscow until 2023. * During the 1980s, the block of 16th Street NW between L and M streets, in front of the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C. (which later became the Russian ambassador's residence in Washington, D.C., Russian ambassador's residence) was renamed "Andrei Sakharov Plaza" as a form of protest against his 1980 arrest and detention. * In Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, Sakharov Square, located in the heart of the city, is named after him. * The Sakharov Gardens (est. 1990) are located at the entrance to Jerusalem, Israel, off the Jerusalem–Tel Aviv Highway. There is also a street named after him in Haifa, near the Haifa Hof HaCarmel train station. * In Nizhny Novgorod, there is a Sakharov Museum in the apartment on the first floor of the 12-storeyed house where the Sakharov family lived for seven years; in 2014 his monument was erected near the house. * In Saint Petersburg, his monument stands in Sakharov Square, and there is a Sakharov Park. * In 1979, an asteroid, 1979 Sakharov, was named after him. * A public square in Vilnius in front of the Press House is named after Sakharov. The square was named on 16 March 1991, as the Press House was still January Events, occupied by the Soviet Army. * Andreja Saharova iela in the district of Pļavnieki in Riga, Latvia, is named after Sakharov. * Andreij-Sacharow-Platz in downtown Nuremberg is named in honour of Sakharov. * In Belarus, International Sakharov Environmental University was named after him. * Intersection of Ventura Blvd and Laurel Canyon Blvd in Studio City, Los Angeles, is named Andrei Sakharov Square. * In Arnhem, the bridge over the Nederrijn is called the Andrej Sacharovbrug. * The Andrej Sacharovweg is a street in Assen, Netherlands. There are also streets named in his honour in other places in the Netherlands such as Amsterdam, Amstelveen, The Hague, Hellevoetsluis, Leiden, Purmerend, Rotterdam, Utrecht * A street in Copenhagen, Denmark. * Quai Andreï Sakharov in Tournai, Belgium, is named in honour of Sakharov. * In Poland, streets named in his honour in Warsaw, Łódź and Kraków. * Andreï Sakharov Boulevard in the district of Mladost, Sofia, Mladost in Sofia, Bulgaria, is named after him. * In New York City, a street sign at the southwest corner of Third Avenue and 67th Street in Manhattan reads ''Sakharov-Bonner Corner'', in honor of Sakharov and his wife, Yelena Bonner. The corner is just down the block from the Soviet Mission to the United Nations (which later became the Russian mission) and was the scene of repeated anti-Soviet demonstrations. * In Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, there is Academician Andrei Sakharov street.


Media

* In the 1984 made-for-TV film ''Sakharov'' starring Jason Robards. * In the television series ''Star Trek: The Next Generation'', one of the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D), ''Enterprise''-D's Shuttlecraft (Star Trek), Shuttlecraft is named after Sakharov, and is featured prominently in several episodes. This follows the ''Star Trek'' tradition of naming Shuttlecraft after prominent scientists, and particularly in ''The Next Generation'', physicists. * The fictitious interplanetary spacecraft ''Leonov (fictional spacecraft), Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov'' from the novel ''2010: Odyssey Two'' by Arthur C. Clarke is powered by a "Sakharov drive". The novel was published in 1982, when Sakharov was in exile in Nizhny Novgorod, and was dedicated both to Sakharov and to Alexei Leonov. * Russian singer Alexander Gradsky wrote and performed the song "Памяти А. Д. Сахарова" ("In memory of Andrei Sakharov"), which features on his ''Live In "Russia" 2 (Живем в "России" 2)'' CD. * The faction leader of the Ecologists in the PC game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, its prequel is a scientist named Professor Sakharov.


Honours and awards

* Hero of Socialist Labour (three times: 12 August 1953; 20 June 1956; 7 March 1962). * Four Orders of Lenin. * Lenin Prize (1956). * State Stalin Prize, Stalin Prize (1953). * Elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1969) * Elected member of the National Academy of Sciences (1973) In 1980, Sakharov was stripped of all Soviet awards for "anti-Soviet activities". Later, during glasnost, he declined the return of his awards and, consequently, Mikhail Gorbachev did not sign the necessary decree. * Prix mondial Cino Del Duca (1974). * Nobel Peace Prize (1975). * Elected member of the American Philosophical Society (1978) * Laurea Honoris Causa of the Sapienza University of Rome (1980). * Grand Cross of Order of the Cross of Vytis (Posthumous awards, posthumously on January 8, 2003).


Bibliography


Books

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Articles and interviews

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See also

* Baryogenesis#Sakharov conditions, Sakharov conditions *
Sakharov Prize The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, commonly known as the Sakharov Prize, is an honorary award for individuals or groups who have dedicated their lives to the defence of human rights and freedom of thought. Named after Russian scienti ...
* List of peace activists * Natan Sharansky * Stanislaw Ulam * Omid Kokabee * Mordechai Vanunu


References


Further reading

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External links


The Andrei Sakharov Archives
at the Houghton Library. *
Andrei Sakharov: Soviet Physics, Nuclear Weapons, and Human Rights
. Web exhibit at the American Institute of Physics.


Annotated bibliography of Andrei Sakharov from the Alsos Digital Library
* *


Videos

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Sakharov, Andrei Dmitrievich 1921 births 1989 deaths Scientists from Moscow Activists from Moscow World War II refugees Russian physicists Soviet physicists Soviet nuclear physicists 20th-century Russian writers Amnesty International prisoners of conscience held by the Soviet Union European democratic socialists Full Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences Grand Crosses of the Order of the Cross of Vytis Heroes of Socialist Labour Recipients of the Lenin Prize Members of the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union Moscow State University alumni Nobel Peace Prize laureates Nuclear weapons program of the Soviet Union people Nuclear weapons scientists and engineers People of the Cold War Perestroika Recipients of the Order of Lenin Hunger strikers Soviet atheists Soviet inventors Soviet memoirists Soviet anti–nuclear weapons activists Soviet democracy activists Soviet dissidents Soviet male writers Soviet Nobel laureates Soviet non-fiction writers Soviet prisoners and detainees Soviet psychiatric abuse whistleblowers Soviet socialists Recipients of the Stalin Prize Writers from Moscow Russian political prisoners Political party founders Soviet male non-fiction writers Members of the American Philosophical Society Soviet reformers Soviet human rights activists Deaths from cardiomyopathy Fellows of the American Physical Society Russian scientists Eurasian economic integration