Andrei Sakharov

While working in Ulyanovsk, he met Klavdia Vikhireva, a laboratory assistant, and they got married in July 1943. They were blessed with three children, Tanya, Lyuba, and Dmitry. Unfortunately, Klavdia died in 1969.

While standing vigil at a trial in 1970 he met Yelena G. Bonner, a human rights activist. They got married in 1972 and she became his strongest supporter.

From 1980 to 1986, he was banished from Moscow to Gorky and cut off from contact with family, friends, and colleagues.

He was born on May 21, 1921 in Moscow, to Dmitri Ivanovich Sakharov, a physics teacher and pianist, and his wife, Yekaterina Alekseyevna Sakharova, a homemaker.

He was heavily influenced by thoughts and personality of his parents and paternal grandmother, Maria Petrovna.

In 1938, he enrolled at Moscow State University but during World War II, he was evacuated to Aşgabat, which is a part of present day Turkmenistan from where he graduated in 1942. He then started working in the laboratory of a munitions factory in Ulyanovsk.

In 1945, he returned to Moscow and got enrolled in the P.N. Lebedev Physics Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (FIAN). He completed his doctorate in 1947.

After the war, he started his research on cosmic rays and also played a vital 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.

During the 1950s and 1960s he became involved in top secret research on thermonuclear weapons in a secret location. Working along with Igor Tamm, he suggested the idea for a controlled nuclear fusion reactor, the tokamak, in the early 1950s.

During the late 1950s, he became concerned about the moral and political implications of his work and protested against nuclear proliferation.

He returned to fundamental science in the late 1960s and began working on particle physics and cosmology. He also proposed the idea of induced gravity as an alternative theory of quantum gravity.

He published his best-known political essay, ‘Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom’ in 1968.

One of his most crucial works was the conceptual breakthrough in development of high-performance atomic weapons. He was the designer of the Soviet Union's ‘Third Idea’, a codename for Soviet development of thermonuclear weapons.

He was also a political activist and humanitarian who developed a strong awareness of the dangers of nuclear testing activity and the irreversible consequences of nuclear war. He also published several prominent articles and other Soviet journals arguing against continued nuclear testing and the arms race.