Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov (Russian:Игорь Васильевич Курчатов; 12 January 1903 [O.S. 30 December 1902] – 7 February 1960) was a Sovietphysicist who played a central role in organizing and directing the formerSoviet program of nuclear weapons.[2] He has been called the "father of the Russian atomic bomb".[3]
Kurchatov, a recipient of many former Soviet honors, had an instrumental role in modernnuclear industry in Russia. His rapid decline in health is mainly attributed to a 1949 radiation accident inChelyabinsk-40.: 107–108 [4] Kurchatov died in Moscow in 1960, aged 57.[1]
Kurchatov was born inSimsky Zavod inUfa Governorate, Russia, on 12 January 1903.: 2039 [5] His father, Vasily Alekseyevich Kurchatov, was a surveyor and former forester's assistant in theUral Mountains; his mother, Mariya Vasilyevna Ostroumova, a daughter of the parish priest at Sim, was a school teacher.[6][1] He was the second of three children of Vasily Kurchatov, and the family moved toSimferopol inCrimea in 1912.[7] The Kurchatovs were ofRussian ethnicity.[8]
After his older sister, Antonina, died in Crimea, Igor grew up with his younger brother, Boris, where they both attended the Simferopol gymnasium №1, and was aMandolin player at his school's orchestra.[7] DuringWorld War I, Igor and Boris had to work to support the family, becoming a skilledwelder and developing interests insteam engines, wishing to become an engineer.[7]
Kurchatov attended theCrimea State University where he studied physics and had built a reputation for his mechanical ability to perform physics experiments, for which he was titled as adoctorate.: 13 [9][7][10] Kurchatov soon moved toBaku in Azerbaijan after securing physics assistance job at theAzerbaijan Polytechnic Institute.: 449 [11] There, he presented his experiments inelectrical conduction, which impressed Dr.Abram Ioffe who was there as a guest, and invited him toPhysico-Technical Institute in Saint Petersburg, Russia.[7][12] Kurchatov married Marina Sinelnikova in 1927 and they did not have children.[13]
In 1940, Kurchatov moved toKazan and raised objection onspontaneous fission whenGeorgy Flyorov directed a letter about the discovery.: 47–57 [7] In 1942–43, Kurchatov found a project with theSoviet Navy and moved toMurmansk where he worked with fellow physicistAnatoly Alexandrov.[4] By November 1941, they had devised a method ofdemagnetizing ships to protect them from Germanmines, which was in active use until the end of World War II and thereafter.[17][18][19] The job with Soviet Navy solved Kurchatov's objection on spontaneous fission when he wrote in 1944: "Uranium must be separated into two parts at the moment of detonation. Upon the breaking up of the nuclei in a kilogram of uranium, the energy released must be equal to the explosion of 20,000 tons ofTNT equivalent.": 152 [20]: 30–32 [21]
After 1942, Kurchatov oversaw the facility expansion and overall development of the Russian program in the Soviet Union, from military to civilian dimensions of the nuclear program.: 24–25 [22][23] Kurchatov is widely known as father of the Soviet program of nuclear weapons, and is often compared to AmericanRobert Oppenheimer— although Kurchatov was not atheoretical physicist.[24]: 30 [25]: 34 [26]
The Soviet establishment did not start the program until 1943 despite receiving intelligence from Russian spies in the United States and a warning fromGeorgii Flerov.: 34 [26] Kurchatov, as many others, was working towards building ammunition for theRed Army's campaign against theGerman forces at theEastern Front ofWorld War II.: 34 [26] Initially, the Soviet establishment askedAbram Ioffe to lead theSoviet program of nuclear weapons, which Ioffe rejected, instead recommending Kurchatov in 1942.: 50–51 [27] Kurchatov established theLaboratory No. 2 in Moscow by bringingAbram Alikhanov (who worked on heavy water production) fromArmenia andLev Artsimovich who was instrumental in electromagnetic isotope separation.: 51–52 [27] Initially, Kurchatov insisted working without foreign data on isotope separation and was aiming to produce material using thegas centrifuges but the gas centrifuge machine would be available to the Soviets only much later.: 53–54 [27] Facing a tighter deadline from Stalin, Kurchatov relied upon foreign data by choosing theGaseous diffusion method to produce the fissile material, a move that irkedPyotr Kapitsa who raised objections against this but was dismissed.: 54 [27]
During the early years, the Soviet program suffered from many setbacks due to logistical failures and lack of commitment by the Soviet establishment but received later full support - after the atomic bombings ofHiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.: 51–52 [27] In 1942, Kurchatov was informed of results obtained fromChicago Pile-1 by the Soviet intelligence, and provided his view of making a nuclear bomb.: 23 [28] In 1945, Kurchatov became involved in designing and building thefirst reactor at Laboratory No. 2 which sustained the nuclear chain reaction in late 1946.: 23 [28] Together with Alikhanov and Flerov, Kurchatov authored a paper on the production of plutonium in a uranium graphite reactor.: 26 [28] In 1947, Kurchatov worked withIsaak Kikoin to verify the calculations of the foreign data received on the American program.: 55 [27]
In 1946, the Soviet program was aggressively pursued underLavrentiy Beria, who (likeKapitsa) had a conflict with Kurchatov over his reliance on design data provided byKlaus Fuchs, a German physicist in the AmericanManhattan Project, to meet Stalin's deadline.: 36 [26] The design of the first Soviet nuclear device town ofSarov in the Gorki Oblast (nowNizhny Novgorod Oblast), on theVolga, was started and renamedArzamas-16.: 36 [26] Kurchatov recruitedYulii Khariton (who first resisted but joined the program: 87 [14]) andYakov Zel'dovich, and Kurchatov vigorously defended their deuterium calculations, insisting that the data could not be more accurate on cross section estimates.: 73 [29]: 87–88 [14]
The team was assisted by public disclosures made by theUS government as well as by further information supplied by Fuchs. However, Kurchatov and Beria feared that the intelligence was disinformation and so insisted that their scientists retest everything themselves. Beria, in particular, would use the intelligence as a third-party check on the conclusions of the teams of scientists.
TheRussian spies in the United States greatly aided in providing the key data on American nuclear devices, which allowed Kurchatov to avoid time-consuming and expensive trial and error problems.: 49–50 [30] The fissile material was obtained from using thegaseous diffusion and implosion-type plutonium core that Kurchatov spent most of his time on.: 551 [27] Furthermore, the German nuclear physicists were instrumental in speeding the acquisition of device data, and were employed under Kurchatov's guidance.: 36 [31]
On 29 August 1949, Kurchatov and his team successfully detonated its initialtest device RDS-1 (a plutonium implosion bomb) at theSemipalatinsk Test Site– the device was codenamedRDS-1 (РДС–1) by Kurchatov which was approved by Soviet establishment.: 219 [32] Kurchatov later remarked that his main feeling at the time to be one of relief.: 36–37 [26]
In 1950, the work onthermonuclear weapon was started by Khariton, Sakharov, Zel'dovich, Tamm, and others working under Kurchatov's leadership at Arzamas-16.: 75–76 [7]: 35 [33] Kurchatov aided in calculations but most work was done byVitaly Ginzburg,Andrei Sakharov, Khariton, and Zel'dovich who had the most credit in developing the design for the thermonuclear device, known asRDS-6, which was detonated in 1953.: 36 [33]
By the time RDS-1 exploded, Kurchatov had decided to work on nuclear power generation, working closely with engineerNikolay Dollezhal, which would established theObninsk Nuclear Power Plant, near Moscow.: 37 [31] The site was opened in 1954, which was known for its kind and was the firstnuclear power plant in the world.: 37 [31] His knowledge on naval architecture undoubtedly helped him in designing the first civilian nuclear ship, theLenin.: 107 [4]
After Stalin's death and the execution of Beria, Kurchatov began to speak about the dangers ofnuclear war, ofnuclear weapon testing and visited England where he spoke in favour of greater interaction between Russian and Western scientists on nuclear fusion applications.: 37–38 [26]
In January 1949, Kurchatov was involved in a serious radiation accident which became a catastrophe atChelyabinsk-40, in which it is possible that even more people died than atChernobyl.: 11–14 [34] In an effort to save the uranium load and reduce losses in the production of plutonium, Kurchatov, without proper safety gear, was the first to step into the central hall of the damaged reactor full of radioactive gases.[35]: 242 [36] After 1950, Kurchatov's health sharply declined. He suffered a stroke in 1954, and died in Moscow of a cardiacembolism on 7 February 1960, aged 57. He was cremated, and his ashes were buried in theKremlin Wall Necropolis onRed Square.[4]
Kurchatov on a 2003 stamp of Russia.Monument to Kurchatov at the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site's Central Staff office, 1991.
During his time in Soviet nuclear program, Kurchatov swore he would not cut his beard until the Soviet 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".[37] Kurchatov was a communist: 37 [26] who had a portrait of Stalin by the time he died, and a member ofCommunist Party of the Soviet Union.: 37 [26]
For his part in establishing the Soviet nuclear program, in accordance with state decree 627-258, Kurchatov was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor, the Stalin Prize First Class, the sum of 500,000 rubles (besides the earlier results of (50%) premium in the amount of 500,000 rubles) and aZIS-110 car, a private house and cottage furnished by the state, a doubling of his salary and "the right (for life for him and his wife) to free travel by rail, water and air transport in the USSR". In all, he was:
Member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (elected in 1943)[1]
Three times Hero of Socialist Labor (1949, 1951, 1954)[1]
Awarded five Orders of Lenin
Awarded two Orders of the Red Banner
Awarded the following medals: "For Victory over Germany", "For the defense of Sevastopol"
Four times recipient of the Stalin Prize (1942, 1949, 1951, 1954)
Recipient of the Lenin Prize (1957).
Kurchatov was buried in theKremlin Wall in Moscow, a burial place reserved for top Soviet officials. In 1960 his institute was renamed to the I.V. Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, and in 1991 to the Russian Research Centre Kurchatov Institute. TheKurchatov Medal was established by the Academy of Sciences for outstanding work in nuclear physics.[1] In theTransfermium Wars element naming controversy, the USSR's proposed name for element 104 was "kurchatovium", Ku, in honor of Kurchatov. Element 104 is now known asrutherfordium.
^abcdefghiDay, Dwayne A. (1999).The Maker of Stalin's Bomb. Vienna, Austria: National Endowment for the Humanities.Archived from the original on 17 September 2023. Retrieved6 November 2022.
^Medvedev, Zhores A.; Medvedev, Roy Aleksandrovich (2003).The Unknown Stalin. I.B.Tauris. pp. 163, 165.ISBN978-1-86064-768-0.Archived from the original on 21 February 2024. Retrieved21 February 2024.
