“I am not the simplest person,” American physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi once remarked. “But compared to Oppenheimer, I am very, very simple.” Robert Oppenheimer was one of the central figures of the twentieth century, whose very “complexity” absorbed the political and ethical contradictions of the country.
During World War II, the brilliant physicist Azulius Robert Oppenheimer led the development of American nuclear scientists to create the first atomic bomb in human history. The scientist led a solitary and secluded lifestyle, and this gave rise to suspicions of treason.
Atomic weapons are the result of all previous developments of science and technology. Discoveries that are directly related to its emergence were made at the end of the 19th century. The research of A. Becquerel, Pierre Curie and Marie Sklodowska-Curie, E. Rutherford and others played a huge role in revealing the secrets of the atom.
At the beginning of 1939, the French physicist Joliot-Curie concluded that a chain reaction was possible that would lead to an explosion of monstrous destructive force and that uranium could become a source of energy, like an ordinary explosive. This conclusion became the impetus for developments in the creation of nuclear weapons.
Europe was on the eve of World War II, and the potential possession of such a powerful weapon pushed militaristic circles to quickly create it, but the problem of having a large amount of uranium ore for large-scale research was a brake. Physicists from Germany, England, the USA, and Japan worked on the creation of atomic weapons, realizing that without a sufficient amount of uranium ore it was impossible to carry out work, the USA in September 1940 purchased a large amount of the required ore using false documents from Belgium, which allowed them to work on the creation nuclear weapons are in full swing.
From 1939 to 1945, more than two billion dollars were spent on the Manhattan Project. A huge uranium purification plant was built in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. H.C. Urey and Ernest O. Lawrence (inventor of the cyclotron) proposed a purification method based on the principle of gas diffusion followed by magnetic separation of the two isotopes. A gas centrifuge separated the light Uranium-235 from the heavier Uranium-238.
On the territory of the United States, in Los Alamos, in the desert expanses of New Mexico, an American nuclear center was created in 1942. Many scientists worked on the project, but the main one was Robert Oppenheimer. Under his leadership, the best minds of that time were gathered not only in the USA and England, but in almost all of Western Europe. A huge team worked on the creation of nuclear weapons, including 12 Nobel Prize laureates. Work in Los Alamos, where the laboratory was located, did not stop for a minute. In Europe, meanwhile, the Second World War was going on, and Germany carried out massive bombings of English cities, which endangered the English atomic project “Tub Alloys”, and England voluntarily transferred its developments and leading scientists of the project to the United States, which allowed the United States to take a leading position in the development of nuclear physics (creation of nuclear weapons).
“The Father of the Atomic Bomb,” he was at the same time an ardent opponent of American nuclear policy. Bearing the title of one of the most outstanding physicists of his time, he enjoyed studying the mysticism of ancient Indian books. A communist, a traveler, and a staunch American patriot, a very spiritual man, he was nevertheless willing to betray his friends in order to protect himself from the attacks of anti-communists. The scientist who developed the plan to cause the greatest damage to Hiroshima and Nagasaki cursed himself for the “innocent blood on his hands.”
Writing about this controversial man is not an easy task, but it is an interesting one, and the twentieth century is marked by a number of books about him. However, the scientist’s rich life continues to attract biographers.
Oppenheimer was born in New York in 1903 into a family of wealthy and educated Jews. Oppenheimer was brought up in a love of painting, music, and in an atmosphere of intellectual curiosity. In 1922, he entered Harvard University and graduated with honors in just three years, his main subject being chemistry. Over the next few years, the precocious young man traveled to several European countries, where he worked with physicists who were studying the problems of studying atomic phenomena in the light of new theories. Just a year after graduating from university, Oppenheimer published a scientific paper that showed how deeply he understood the new methods. Soon he, together with the famous Max Born, developed the most important part of quantum theory, known as the Born-Oppenheimer method. In 1927, his outstanding doctoral dissertation brought him worldwide fame.
In 1928 he worked at the Universities of Zurich and Leiden. The same year he returned to the USA. From 1929 to 1947, Oppenheimer taught at the University of California and the California Institute of Technology. From 1939 to 1945, he actively participated in the work on creating an atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Project; heading the Los Alamos laboratory specially created for this purpose. 
In 1929, Oppenheimer, a rising scientific star, accepted offers from two of several universities vying for the right to invite him. He taught the spring semester at the vibrant, young California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and the fall and winter semesters at the University of California, Berkeley, where he became the first professor of quantum mechanics. In fact, the polymath had to adjust for some time, gradually reducing the level of discussion to the capabilities of his students. In 1936, he fell in love with Jean Tatlock, a restless and moody young woman whose passionate idealism found outlet in communist activism. Like many thoughtful people of the time, Oppenheimer explored the ideas of the left as a possible alternative, although he did not join the Communist Party, as his younger brother, sister-in-law and many of his friends did. His interest in politics, like his ability to read Sanskrit, was a natural result of his constant pursuit of knowledge. By his own account, he was also deeply alarmed by the explosion of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany and Spain and invested $1,000 a year from his $15,000 annual salary in projects related to the activities of communist groups. After meeting Kitty Harrison, who became his wife in 1940, Oppenheimer broke up with Jean Tatlock and moved away from her circle of left-wing friends.
In 1939, the United States learned that Hitler's Germany had discovered nuclear fission in preparation for global war. Oppenheimer and other scientists immediately realized that the German physicists would try to create a controlled chain reaction that could be the key to creating a weapon far more destructive than any that existed at that time. Enlisting the help of the great scientific genius, Albert Einstein, concerned scientists warned President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the danger in a famous letter. In authorizing funding for projects aimed at creating untested weapons, the president acted in strict secrecy. Ironically, many of the world's leading scientists, forced to flee their homeland, worked together with American scientists in laboratories scattered throughout the country. One part of the university groups explored the possibility of creating a nuclear reactor, others took up the problem of separating uranium isotopes necessary to release energy in a chain reaction. Oppenheimer, who had previously been busy with theoretical problems, was offered to organize a wide range of work only at the beginning of 1942.
The US Army's atomic bomb program was codenamed Project Manhattan and was led by 46-year-old Colonel Leslie R. Groves, a career military officer. Groves, who characterized the scientists working on the atomic bomb as "an expensive bunch of nuts," however, acknowledged that Oppenheimer had a hitherto untapped ability to control his fellow debaters when the atmosphere became tense. The physicist proposed that all the scientists be brought together in one laboratory in the quiet provincial town of Los Alamos, New Mexico, in an area he knew well. By March 1943, the boarding school for boys had been turned into a strictly guarded secret center, with Oppenheimer becoming its scientific director. By insisting on the free exchange of information between scientists, who were strictly forbidden to leave the center, Oppenheimer created an atmosphere of trust and mutual respect, which contributed to the amazing success of his work. Without sparing himself, he remained the head of all areas of this complex project, although his personal life suffered greatly from this. But for a mixed group of scientists - among whom there were more than a dozen then or future Nobel laureates and of whom it was a rare individual who lacked a strong personality - Oppenheimer was an unusually dedicated leader and a keen diplomat. Most of them would agree that the lion's share of the credit for the project's ultimate success belongs to him. By December 30, 1944, Groves, who had by then become a general, could say with confidence that the two billion dollars spent would produce a bomb ready for action by August 1 of the following year. But when Germany admitted defeat in May 1945, many of the researchers working at Los Alamos began to think about using new weapons. After all, Japan would probably have soon capitulated even without the atomic bombing. Should the United States become the first country in the world to use such a terrible device? Harry S. Truman, who became president after Roosevelt's death, appointed a committee to study the possible consequences of the use of the atomic bomb, which included Oppenheimer. Experts decided to recommend dropping an atomic bomb without warning on a large Japanese military installation. Oppenheimer's consent was also obtained.
All these worries would, of course, be moot if the bomb had not gone off. The world's first atomic bomb was tested on July 16, 1945, approximately 80 kilometers from the air force base in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The device being tested, named "Fat Man" for its convex shape, was attached to a steel tower installed in a desert area. At exactly 5:30 a.m., a remote-controlled detonator detonated the bomb. With an echoing roar, a giant purple-green-orange fireball shot into the sky across an area 1.6 kilometers in diameter. The earth shook from the explosion, the tower disappeared. A white column of smoke quickly rose to the sky and began to gradually expand, taking on the terrifying shape of a mushroom at an altitude of about 11 kilometers. The first nuclear explosion shocked scientific and military observers near the test site and turned their heads. But Oppenheimer remembered the lines from the Indian epic poem "Bhagavad Gita": "I will become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Until the end of his life, satisfaction from scientific success was always mixed with a sense of responsibility for the consequences. 
On the morning of August 6, 1945, there was a clear, cloudless sky over Hiroshima. As before, the approach of two American planes from the east (one of them was called Enola Gay) at an altitude of 10-13 km did not cause alarm (since they appeared in the sky of Hiroshima every day). One of the planes dived and dropped something, and then both planes turned and flew away. The dropped object slowly descended by parachute and suddenly exploded at an altitude of 600 m above the ground. It was the Baby bomb.
Three days after "Little Boy" was detonated in Hiroshima, a replica of the first "Fat Man" was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. On August 15, Japan, whose resolve was finally broken by these new weapons, signed an unconditional surrender. However, the voices of skeptics had already begun to be heard, and Oppenheimer himself predicted two months after Hiroshima that “mankind will curse the names Los Alamos and Hiroshima.”
The whole world was shocked by the explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tellingly, Oppenheimer managed to combine his worries about testing a bomb on civilians and the joy that the weapon had finally been tested. 
Nevertheless, the following year he accepted an appointment as chairman of the scientific council of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), thereby becoming the most influential adviser to the government and military on nuclear issues. While the West and the Stalin-led Soviet Union prepared in earnest for the Cold War, each side focused its attention on the arms race. Although many of the Manhattan Project scientists did not support the idea of creating a new weapon, former Oppenheimer collaborators Edward Teller and Ernest Lawrence believed that US national security required the rapid development of the hydrogen bomb. Oppenheimer was horrified. From his point of view, the two nuclear powers were already confronting each other, like “two scorpions in a jar, each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of his own life.” With the proliferation of new weapons, wars would no longer have winners and losers - only victims. And the “father of the atomic bomb” made a public statement that he was against the development of the hydrogen bomb. Always uncomfortable with Oppenheimer and clearly jealous of his achievements, Teller began to make efforts to head the new project, implying that Oppenheimer should no longer be involved in the work. He told FBI investigators that his rival was using his authority to keep scientists from working on the hydrogen bomb, and revealed the secret that Oppenheimer suffered from bouts of severe depression in his youth. When President Truman agreed to fund the hydrogen bomb in 1950, Teller could celebrate victory.
In 1954, Oppenheimer's enemies launched a campaign to remove him from power, which they succeeded after a month-long search for "black spots" in his personal biography. As a result, a show case was organized in which many influential political and scientific figures spoke out against Oppenheimer. As Albert Einstein later put it: “Oppenheimer’s problem was that he loved a woman who didn’t love him: the US government.”
By allowing Oppenheimer's talent to flourish, America doomed him to destruction.
Oppenheimer is known not only as the creator of the American atomic bomb. He is the author of many works on quantum mechanics, the theory of relativity, elementary particle physics, and theoretical astrophysics. In 1927 he developed the theory of interaction of free electrons with atoms. Together with Born, he created the theory of the structure of diatomic molecules. In 1931, he and P. Ehrenfest formulated a theorem, the application of which to the nitrogen nucleus showed that the proton-electron hypothesis of the structure of nuclei leads to a number of contradictions with the known properties of nitrogen. Investigated the internal conversion of g-rays. In 1937 he developed the cascade theory of cosmic showers, in 1938 he made the first calculation of a neutron star model, and in 1939 he predicted the existence of “black holes”.
Oppenheimer owns a number of popular books, including Science and the Common Understanding (1954), The Open Mind (1955), Some Reflections on Science and Culture (1960) . Oppenheimer died in Princeton on February 18, 1967. 
Work on nuclear projects in the USSR and the USA began simultaneously. In August 1942, the secret “Laboratory No. 2” began working in one of the buildings in the courtyard of Kazan University. Igor Kurchatov was appointed its leader.
In Soviet times, it was argued that the USSR solved its atomic problem completely independently, and Kurchatov was considered the “father” of the domestic atomic bomb. Although there were rumors about some secrets stolen from the Americans. And only in the 90s, 50 years later, one of the main characters then, Yuli Khariton, spoke about the significant role of intelligence in accelerating the lagging Soviet project. And American scientific and technical results were obtained by Klaus Fuchs, who arrived in the English group.
Information from abroad helped the country's leadership make a difficult decision - to begin work on nuclear weapons during a difficult war. The reconnaissance allowed our physicists to save time and helped to avoid a “misfire” during the first atomic test, which had enormous political significance.
In 1939, a chain reaction of fission of uranium-235 nuclei was discovered, accompanied by the release of colossal energy. Soon after, articles on nuclear physics began to disappear from the pages of scientific journals. This could indicate the real prospect of creating an atomic explosive and weapons based on it.
After the discovery by Soviet physicists of the spontaneous fission of uranium-235 nuclei and the determination of the critical mass, the residency was initiated by the head of the scientific and technological revolution
A corresponding directive was sent to L. Kvasnikova.
In the FSB of Russia (formerly the KGB of the USSR), 17 volumes of archival file No. 13676, which document who and how recruited US citizens to work for Soviet intelligence, are buried under the heading “keep forever.” Only a few of the top leadership of the USSR KGB had access to the materials of this case, the secrecy of which was only recently lifted. Soviet intelligence received the first information about the work on creating an American atomic bomb in the fall of 1941. And already in March 1942, extensive information about the research ongoing in the USA and England fell on I.V. Stalin’s desk. According to Yu. B. Khariton, in that dramatic period it was safer to use the bomb design already tested by the Americans for our first explosion. “Taking into account state interests, any other solution was then unacceptable. The merit of Fuchs and our other assistants abroad is undoubted. However, we implemented the American scheme during the first test not so much for technical, but for political reasons. 
The message that the Soviet Union had mastered the secret of nuclear weapons caused the US ruling circles to want to start a preventive war as quickly as possible. The Troyan plan was developed, which envisaged the start of hostilities on January 1, 1950. At that time, the United States had 840 strategic bombers in combat units, 1,350 in reserve, and over 300 atomic bombs.
A test site was built in the area of Semipalatinsk. At exactly 7:00 a.m. on August 29, 1949, the first Soviet nuclear device, codenamed RDS-1, was detonated at this test site.
The Troyan plan, according to which atomic bombs were to be dropped on 70 cities of the USSR, was thwarted due to the threat of a retaliatory strike. The event that took place at the Semipalatinsk test site informed the world about the creation of nuclear weapons in the USSR. 
Foreign intelligence not only attracted the attention of the country's leadership to the problem of creating atomic weapons in the West and thereby initiated similar work in our country. Thanks to foreign intelligence information, as recognized by academicians A. Aleksandrov, Yu. Khariton and others, I. Kurchatov did not make big mistakes, we managed to avoid dead-end directions in the creation of atomic weapons and create an atomic bomb in the USSR in a shorter time, in just three years , while the United States spent four years on this, spending five billion dollars on its creation.
As academician Yu. Khariton noted in an interview with the Izvestia newspaper on December 8, 1992, the first Soviet atomic charge was manufactured according to the American model with the help of information received from K. Fuchs. According to the academician, when government awards were presented to participants in the Soviet atomic project, Stalin, satisfied that there was no American monopoly in this area, remarked: “If we had been one to a year and a half late, we would probably have tried this charge on ourselves.” ".
The one who invented the atomic bomb could not even imagine what tragic consequences this miracle invention of the 20th century could lead to. It was a very long journey before the residents of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki experienced this superweapon.
A start
In April 1903, Paul Langevin's friends gathered in the Parisian garden of France. The reason was the defense of the dissertation of the young and talented scientist Marie Curie. Among the distinguished guests was the famous English physicist Sir Ernest Rutherford. In the midst of the fun, the lights were turned off. announced to everyone that there would be a surprise. With a solemn look, Pierre Curie brought in a small tube with radium salts, which shone with a green light, causing extraordinary delight among those present. Subsequently, the guests heatedly discussed the future of this phenomenon. Everyone agreed that radium would solve the acute problem of energy shortages. This inspired everyone for new research and further prospects. If they had been told then that laboratory work with radioactive elements would lay the foundation for the terrible weapons of the 20th century, it is not known what their reaction would have been. It was then that the story of the atomic bomb began, killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians.
Playing ahead
On December 17, 1938, the German scientist Otto Gann obtained irrefutable evidence of the decay of uranium into smaller elementary particles. Essentially, he managed to split the atom. In the scientific world, this was regarded as a new milestone in the history of mankind. Otto Gann did not share the political views of the Third Reich. Therefore, in the same year, 1938, the scientist was forced to move to Stockholm, where, together with Friedrich Strassmann, he continued his scientific research. Fearing that Nazi Germany will be the first to receive terrible weapons, he writes a letter warning about this. The news of a possible advance greatly alarmed the US government. The Americans began to act quickly and decisively.
Who created the atomic bomb? American project
Even before the group, many of whom were refugees from the Nazi regime in Europe, was tasked with the development of nuclear weapons. Initial research, it is worth noting, was carried out in Nazi Germany. In 1940, the government of the United States of America began funding its own program to develop atomic weapons. An incredible sum of two and a half billion dollars was allocated to implement the project. Outstanding physicists of the 20th century were invited to implement this secret project, among whom were more than ten Nobel laureates. In total, about 130 thousand employees were involved, among whom were not only military personnel, but also civilians. The development team was headed by Colonel Leslie Richard Groves, and Robert Oppenheimer became the scientific director. He is the man who invented the atomic bomb. A special secret engineering building was built in the Manhattan area, which we know under the code name “Manhattan Project”. Over the next few years, scientists from the secret project worked on the problem of nuclear fission of uranium and plutonium.
The non-peaceful atom of Igor Kurchatov
Today, every schoolchild will be able to answer the question of who invented the atomic bomb in the Soviet Union. And then, in the early 30s of the last century, no one knew this.
In 1932, Academician Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov was one of the first in the world to begin studying the atomic nucleus. Gathering like-minded people around him, Igor Vasilyevich created the first cyclotron in Europe in 1937. In the same year, he and his like-minded people created the first artificial nuclei.
In 1939, I.V. Kurchatov began studying a new direction - nuclear physics. After several laboratory successes in studying this phenomenon, the scientist receives at his disposal a secret research center, which was named “Laboratory No. 2”. Nowadays this classified object is called "Arzamas-16".
The target direction of this center was the serious research and creation of nuclear weapons. Now it becomes obvious who created the atomic bomb in the Soviet Union. His team then consisted of only ten people.
There will be an atomic bomb
By the end of 1945, Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov managed to assemble a serious team of scientists numbering more than a hundred people. The best minds of various scientific specializations came to the laboratory from all over the country to create atomic weapons. After the Americans dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Soviet scientists realized that this could be done with the Soviet Union. "Laboratory No. 2" receives from the country's leadership a sharp increase in funding and a large influx of qualified personnel. Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria is appointed responsible for such an important project. The enormous efforts of Soviet scientists have borne fruit.
Semipalatinsk test site
The atomic bomb in the USSR was first tested at the test site in Semipalatinsk (Kazakhstan). On August 29, 1949, a nuclear device with a yield of 22 kilotons shook the Kazakh soil. Nobel laureate physicist Otto Hanz said: “This is good news. If Russia has atomic weapons, then there will be no war.” It was this atomic bomb in the USSR, encrypted as product No. 501, or RDS-1, that eliminated the US monopoly on nuclear weapons.
Atomic bomb. Year 1945
In the early morning of July 16, the Manhattan Project conducted its first successful test of an atomic device - a plutonium bomb - at the Alamogordo test site in New Mexico, USA.
The money invested in the project was well spent. The first in the history of mankind was carried out at 5:30 am.
“We have done the devil’s work,” the one who invented the atomic bomb in the USA, later called “the father of the atomic bomb,” will say later.
Japan will not capitulate
By the time of the final and successful testing of the atomic bomb, Soviet troops and allies had finally defeated Nazi Germany. However, there was one state that promised to fight to the end for dominance in the Pacific Ocean. From mid-April to mid-July 1945, the Japanese army repeatedly carried out air strikes against allied forces, thereby inflicting heavy losses on the US army. At the end of July 1945, the militaristic Japanese government rejected the Allied demand for surrender under the Potsdam Declaration. It stated, in particular, that in case of disobedience, the Japanese army would face rapid and complete destruction.
The President agrees
The American government kept its word and began a targeted bombing of Japanese military positions. Air strikes did not bring the desired result, and US President Harry Truman decides to invade Japanese territory by American troops. However, the military command dissuades its president from such a decision, citing the fact that an American invasion would entail a large number of casualties.
At the suggestion of Henry Lewis Stimson and Dwight David Eisenhower, it was decided to use a more effective way to end the war. A big supporter of the atomic bomb, US Presidential Secretary James Francis Byrnes, believed that the bombing of Japanese territories would finally end the war and put the United States in a dominant position, which would have a positive impact on the further course of events in the post-war world. Thus, US President Harry Truman was convinced that this was the only correct option.
Atomic bomb. Hiroshima
The small Japanese city of Hiroshima with a population of just over 350 thousand people, located five hundred miles from the Japanese capital Tokyo, was chosen as the first target. After the modified B-29 Enola Gay bomber arrived at the US naval base on Tinian Island, an atomic bomb was installed on board the aircraft. Hiroshima was to experience the effects of 9 thousand pounds of uranium-235.
This never-before-seen weapon was intended for civilians in a small Japanese town. The bomber's commander was Colonel Paul Warfield Tibbetts Jr. The US atomic bomb bore the cynical name “Baby”. On the morning of August 6, 1945, at approximately 8:15 a.m., the American “Little” was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. About 15 thousand tons of TNT destroyed all life within a radius of five square miles. One hundred and forty thousand city residents died in a matter of seconds. The surviving Japanese died a painful death from radiation sickness.
They were destroyed by the American atomic “Baby”. However, the devastation of Hiroshima did not cause the immediate surrender of Japan, as everyone expected. Then it was decided to carry out another bombing of Japanese territory.
Nagasaki. The sky is on fire
The American atomic bomb “Fat Man” was installed on board a B-29 aircraft on August 9, 1945, still there, at the US naval base in Tinian. This time the aircraft commander was Major Charles Sweeney. Initially, the strategic target was the city of Kokura.
However, weather conditions did not allow the plan to be carried out; heavy clouds interfered. Charles Sweeney went into the second round. At 11:02 a.m., the American nuclear “Fat Man” engulfed Nagasaki. It was a more powerful destructive air strike, which was several times stronger than the bombing in Hiroshima. Nagasaki tested an atomic weapon weighing about 10 thousand pounds and 22 kilotons of TNT.
The geographic location of the Japanese city reduced the expected effect. The thing is that the city is located in a narrow valley between the mountains. Therefore, the destruction of 2.6 square miles did not reveal the full potential of American weapons. The Nagasaki atomic bomb test is considered the failed Manhattan Project.
Japan surrendered
At noon on August 15, 1945, Emperor Hirohito announced his country's surrender in a radio address to the people of Japan. This news quickly spread around the world. Celebrations began in the United States of America to mark the victory over Japan. The people rejoiced.
On September 2, 1945, a formal agreement to end the war was signed aboard the American battleship Missouri anchored in Tokyo Bay. Thus ended the most brutal and bloody war in human history.
For six long years, the world community has been moving towards this significant date - since September 1, 1939, when the first shots of Nazi Germany were fired in Poland.
Peaceful atom
In total, 124 nuclear explosions were carried out in the Soviet Union. What is characteristic is that all of them were carried out for the benefit of the national economy. Only three of them were accidents that resulted in the leakage of radioactive elements. Programs for the use of peaceful atoms were implemented in only two countries - the USA and the Soviet Union. Nuclear peaceful energy also knows an example of a global catastrophe, when a reactor exploded at the fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
When Yakov Zeldovich was allowed to publish his scientific articles in foreign academic journals, many Western scientists did not believe that one person could cover such diverse areas of science. The West sincerely believed that Yakov Zeldovich was the collective pseudonym of a large group of Soviet scientists. When it turned out that Zeldovich was not a pseudonym, but a real person, the entire scientific world recognized him as a brilliant scientist. At the same time, Yakov Borisovich did not have a single diploma of higher education - from his youth he simply delved into those areas of science that were interesting to him. He worked from morning to night, but did not sacrifice himself at all - he did what he loved more than anything in the world and what he could not live without. And the scope of his interests is truly amazing: chemical physics, physical chemistry, combustion theory, astrophysics, cosmology, physics of shock waves and detonation, and of course - physics of the atomic nucleus and elementary particles. Research in this latter area of science secured Yakov Zeldovich the title of chief theorist of thermonuclear weapons.
Yakov was born on March 8, 1914 in Minsk, in connection with which he constantly joked that he was born as a gift to women. His father was a lawyer, a member of the bar, his mother was a translator of French novels. In the summer of 1914, the Zeldovich family moved to Petrograd. In 1924, Yasha went to study in the third grade of high school and six years later he successfully graduated. From the autumn of 1930 to May 1931, he attended courses and worked as a laboratory assistant at the Institute of Mechanical Processing of Mineral Resources. In May 1931, Zeldovich began working at the Institute of Chemical Physics, with which he connected his entire life.
According to the memoirs of Professor Lev Aronovich Sena, Zeldovich’s appearance at the Institute of Chemical Physics - then the institute was in Leningrad - happened like this: “On that memorable March day, an excursion from Mekhanoob came. Among the excursionists there was a young man, almost a boy - as it later turned out, he had recently turned 17 years old. Like every guide, I started with my topic. The tourists listened politely, and the young man began to ask questions, which showed that he mastered thermodynamics, molecular physics and chemistry at a level not lower than the third year of university. Taking a moment, I go up to the head of the laboratory, Simon Zalmanovich Roginsky, and say:
Simon! I really like this boy. It would be nice if he came to us.
Simon Zalmanovich answered me:
- Me too, I heard your conversation out of the corner of my ear. I’ll continue the tour myself, and you talk to him, does he want to join us? Then you can take him with you.
I took the young man aside and asked:
- Do you like it here?
- Very.
- Would you like to work with us?
- Partly because of this, I came on the excursion.
Soon Yasha Zeldovich - that was the name of the young man - came to us and began working with me, since I discovered him.”
Communication with theorists of the Leningrad Physics and Technology Institute, along with self-education, became the main source of knowledge for Zeldovich. At one time he studied by correspondence at Leningrad University, later attended some lectures at the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute, but never received a diploma of higher education. Despite this, the “non-graduate” but talented young man was accepted into graduate school at the Institute of Chemical Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1934, and later was even allowed to take candidate exams.
In 1936, Zeldovich defended his dissertation for the degree of candidate of physical and mathematical sciences, and in 1939 he defended his doctoral dissertation. By that time he was barely 25 years old, and everyone around him understood that this was just the beginning! All these years, Zeldovich was searching for effective substances for gas masks and delved into the problem of adsorption - the process of absorption of gases or substances by an adsorbent, for example, activated carbon. After his doctoral dissertation, which became a generalization of his work on the problem of nitrogen oxidation in a hot flame, the name of Zeldovich became widely known in the scientific world.
Even before defending his PhD, Yakov Borisovich became the head of one of the laboratories of the Institute of Chemical Physics. At this time he was studying the theory of combustion. He formed a new approach that organically combined chemical kinetics with the analysis of the thermal and then hydrodynamic picture, taking into account the movement of gas. When the war began, the institute was evacuated to Kazan, where Zeldovich was studying the combustion of propellant rockets for Katyusha rockets, since the combustion of gunpowder in winter was unstable. This problem was solved by him in the shortest possible time. In 1943, for a series of works on the theory of combustion, Yakov Borisovich was awarded the Stalin Prize.
Even before the war, Zeldovich began to study nuclear physics. After the appearance in 1938 of an article by O. Hahn and F. Strassmann on the fission of uranium, Zeldovich and Khariton immediately realized that not only ordinary chain reactions were possible in the process, but also those that could lead to nuclear explosions with the release of enormous energy. At the same time, each of them had their own, completely different working research, so Zeldovich and Khariton began to study the “nuclear” problem in the evenings and on weekends. Together, scientists published a number of works - for example, for the first time they calculated the chain reaction of uranium fission, which made it possible to determine the critical size of the reactor. That is why, after the appointment of Igor Kurchatov as scientific director of the Soviet atomic project, Khariton and Zeldovich were first on the list of scientists involved in work on the atomic bomb.
From the beginning of 1944, while remaining a full-time employee of the Institute of Chemical Physics and holding the position of head of the laboratory, Zeldovich began working on the creation of atomic weapons in Laboratory No. 2 under the leadership of Kurchatov. In Kurchatov’s draft notes on the laboratory’s work plan, there was, for example, the following item: “Theoretical development of issues related to the implementation of the bomb and boiler (01.01.44-01.01.45) - Zeldovich, Pomeranchuk, Gurevich.” Zeldovich eventually became the main theorist of the atomic bomb - for this in 1949 he was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor, awarded the Order of Lenin and awarded the title of Stalin Prize laureate.
In 1958, Zeldovich was elected academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences. From 1965 to 1983, he worked as head of a department at the Institute of Applied Mathematics of the USSR Academy of Sciences, while at the same time being a professor at the Faculty of Physics at Moscow State University. In addition, from 1984 to 1987, having become interested in astrophysics and cosmology, he headed the department of relativistic astrophysics at the State Astronomical Institute. Sternberg.
The breadth of Yakov Borisovich's interests amazed everyone. For example, Andrei Sakharov called him “a man of universal interests,” Landau believed that not a single physicist, except, perhaps, Enrico Fermi, had such a wealth of new ideas, and Kurchatov invariably repeated one phrase: “Still, Yashka is a genius ! Over the 73 years of his life - the outstanding physicist died in 1987 - Zeldovich wrote about 500 scientific papers and dozens of monographs, medals named after him are awarded in various fields of science around the world.
American Robert Oppenheimer and Soviet scientist Igor Kurchatov are officially recognized as the fathers of the atomic bomb. But in parallel, deadly weapons were also being developed in other countries (Italy, Denmark, Hungary), so the discovery rightfully belongs to everyone.
The first to tackle this issue were German physicists Fritz Strassmann and Otto Hahn, who in December 1938 were the first to artificially split the atomic nucleus of uranium. And six months later, the first reactor was already being built at the Kummersdorf test site near Berlin and uranium ore was urgently purchased from the Congo.
“Uranium Project” - the Germans start and lose
In September 1939, the “Uranium Project” was classified. 22 reputable research centers were invited to participate in the program, and the research was supervised by Minister of Armaments Albert Speer. The construction of an installation for separating isotopes and the production of uranium to extract the isotope from it that supports the chain reaction was entrusted to the IG Farbenindustry concern.
For two years, a group of the venerable scientist Heisenberg studied the possibility of creating a reactor with heavy water. A potential explosive (uranium-235 isotope) could be isolated from uranium ore.
But an inhibitor is needed to slow down the reaction - graphite or heavy water. Choosing the latter option created an insurmountable problem.
The only plant for the production of heavy water, which was located in Norway, was disabled by local resistance fighters after the occupation, and small reserves of valuable raw materials were exported to France.
The rapid implementation of the nuclear program was also hindered by the explosion of an experimental nuclear reactor in Leipzig.
Hitler supported the uranium project as long as he hoped to obtain a super-powerful weapon that could influence the outcome of the war he started. After government funding was cut, the work programs continued for some time.
In 1944, Heisenberg managed to create cast uranium plates, and a special bunker was built for the reactor plant in Berlin.
It was planned to complete the experiment to achieve a chain reaction in January 1945, but a month later the equipment was urgently transported to the Swiss border, where it was deployed only a month later. The nuclear reactor contained 664 cubes of uranium weighing 1525 kg. It was surrounded by a graphite neutron reflector weighing 10 tons, and one and a half tons of heavy water were additionally loaded into the core.
On March 23, the reactor finally started working, but the report to Berlin was premature: the reactor did not reach a critical point, and the chain reaction did not occur. Additional calculations showed that the mass of uranium must be increased by at least 750 kg, proportionally adding the amount of heavy water.
But supplies of strategic raw materials were at their limit, as was the fate of the Third Reich. On April 23, the Americans entered the village of Haigerloch, where the tests were carried out. The military dismantled the reactor and transported it to the United States.
The first atomic bombs in the USA
A little later, the Germans began developing the atomic bomb in the USA and Great Britain. It all started with a letter from Albert Einstein and his co-authors, emigrant physicists, sent in September 1939 to US President Franklin Roosevelt.
The appeal emphasized that Nazi Germany was close to creating an atomic bomb.
Stalin first learned about work on nuclear weapons (both allied and adversary) from intelligence officers in 1943. They immediately decided to create a similar project in the USSR. Instructions were issued not only to scientists, but also to intelligence services, for which obtaining any information about nuclear secrets became a major task.
The invaluable information about the developments of American scientists that Soviet intelligence officers were able to obtain significantly advanced the domestic nuclear project. It helped our scientists avoid ineffective search paths and significantly speed up the time frame for achieving the final goal.
Serov Ivan Aleksandrovich - head of the bomb creation operation
Of course, the Soviet government could not ignore the successes of German nuclear physicists. After the war, a group of Soviet physicists, future academicians, were sent to Germany in the uniform of colonels of the Soviet army.
Ivan Serov, the first deputy people's commissar of internal affairs, was appointed head of the operation, this allowed scientists to open any doors.
In addition to their German colleagues, they found reserves of uranium metal. This, according to Kurchatov, shortened the development time of the Soviet bomb by at least a year. More than one ton of uranium and leading nuclear specialists were taken out of Germany by the American military.
Not only chemists and physicists were sent to the USSR, but also qualified labor - mechanics, electricians, glassblowers. Some of the employees were found in prison camps. In total, about 1,000 German specialists worked on the Soviet nuclear project.
German scientists and laboratories on the territory of the USSR in the post-war years
A uranium centrifuge and other equipment, as well as documents and reagents from the von Ardenne laboratory and the Kaiser Institute of Physics were transported from Berlin. As part of the program, laboratories “A”, “B”, “C”, “D” were created, headed by German scientists.
The head of Laboratory “A” was Baron Manfred von Ardenne, who developed a method for gas diffusion purification and separation of uranium isotopes in a centrifuge.
For the creation of such a centrifuge (only on an industrial scale) in 1947 he received the Stalin Prize. At that time, the laboratory was located in Moscow, on the site of the famous Kurchatov Institute. Each German scientist’s team included 5-6 Soviet specialists.
Later, laboratory “A” was taken to Sukhumi, where a physical and technical institute was created on its basis. In 1953, Baron von Ardenne became a Stalin laureate for the second time.
Laboratory B, which conducted experiments in the field of radiation chemistry in the Urals, was headed by Nikolaus Riehl, a key figure in the project. There, in Snezhinsk, the talented Russian geneticist Timofeev-Resovsky, with whom he had been friends back in Germany, worked with him. The successful test of the atomic bomb brought Riehl the star of Hero of Socialist Labor and the Stalin Prize.
Research at Laboratory B in Obninsk was led by Professor Rudolf Pose, a pioneer in the field of nuclear testing. His team managed to create fast neutron reactors, the first nuclear power plant in the USSR, and projects for reactors for submarines.
On the basis of the laboratory, the Physics and Energy Institute named after A.I. was later created. Leypunsky. Until 1957, the professor worked in Sukhumi, then in Dubna, at the Joint Institute of Nuclear Technologies.
Laboratory “G”, located in the Sukhumi sanatorium “Agudzery”, was headed by Gustav Hertz. The nephew of the famous 19th century scientist gained fame after a series of experiments that confirmed the ideas of quantum mechanics and the theory of Niels Bohr.
The results of his productive work in Sukhumi were used to create an industrial installation in Novouralsk, where in 1949 the first Soviet bomb RDS-1 was filled.
The uranium bomb that the Americans dropped on Hiroshima was a cannon type. When creating the RDS-1, domestic nuclear physicists were guided by the Fat Boy - the “Nagasaki bomb”, made of plutonium according to the implosive principle.
In 1951, Hertz was awarded the Stalin Prize for his fruitful work.
German engineers and scientists lived in comfortable houses; they brought their families, furniture, paintings from Germany, they were provided with decent salaries and special food. Did they have the status of prisoners? According to Academician A.P. Aleksandrov, an active participant in the project, they were all prisoners in such conditions.
Having received permission to return to their homeland, the German specialists signed a non-disclosure agreement about their participation in the Soviet nuclear project for 25 years. In the GDR they continued to work in their specialty. Baron von Ardenne was a two-time winner of the German National Prize.
The professor headed the Physics Institute in Dresden, which was created under the auspices of the Scientific Council for the Peaceful Applications of Atomic Energy. The Scientific Council was headed by Gustav Hertz, who received the National Prize of the GDR for his three-volume textbook on atomic physics. Here, in Dresden, at the Technical University, Professor Rudolf Pose also worked.
The participation of German specialists in the Soviet atomic project, as well as the achievements of Soviet intelligence, do not diminish the merits of Soviet scientists who, with their heroic work, created domestic atomic weapons. And yet, without the contribution of each participant in the project, the creation of the nuclear industry and the nuclear bomb would have taken an indefinite period.
Yuliy Borisovich Khariton (1904 - 1996)
Scientific director of the Soviet atomic bomb project, an outstanding Soviet and Russian theoretical physicist and physical chemist.
Winner of the Lenin Prize (1956) and three Stalin Prizes (1949, 1951, 1953).
Three times Hero of Socialist Labor (1949, 1951, 1954).
On August 29, 1949, at 7 o’clock in the morning, the first Soviet atomic bomb was detonated several hundred kilometers from the city of Semipalatinsk.
10 days before this event, a special letter train with a “product,” as the bomb was called in the documents, left the secret city “Arzamas-16,” not indicated on any map, to deliver the “product” and its creators to the test site.
The group of scientists and designers was headed by a man who knew this bomb by heart, all its thousands of parts, and who, with his career and, one might say, his life, was responsible for the test results.
This man was Yuliy Borisovich Khariton.
Jewish boy Yulik Khariton grew up without a mother from the age of 6. He was born in 1904 in St. Petersburg. His mother, Mira Yakovlevna Burovskaya, was an actress at the Moscow Art Theater. She played “Mytila” in the play “The Blue Bird”. Father Boris Iosifovich Khariton, a famous journalist and liberal, edited the cadet newspaper Rech. Yulik’s family lived nervously, in two houses.
In 1910, my mother went to Germany for treatment, but never returned, got married there and in 1933, leaving Berlin, went to Tel Aviv, where, having lived a long life, she died in old age.
And in 1922, along with other ideologically alien intellectuals, the Bolsheviks sent my father abroad on the notorious steamship. My father continued to be a liberal and published the newspaper Segodnya in Riga. In 1940, the Bolsheviks captured Latvia, and Boris Iosifovich Khariton disappeared forever into the basements of the NKVD.
Therefore, neither the father nor the mother ever learned about the extraordinary, one might say fantastic, fate of their son.
This fate was also unusual because it took place under the totalitarian Stalinist regime, when personal data was more important than a living person. And with a profile like Yulik’s, in a country that is building “the most advanced society in the world,” it was not easy. But even if his parents lived in the Land of the Soviets, even then the fate of their son would have been a secret to them, because everything that was connected with their son was a secret to everyone, to his immediate relatives and to millions of his compatriots.
Yulik, jumping through the classroom, graduated from school at the age of 15, and the Polytechnic Institute at the age of 21.
In 1926, he, ideologically fragile, but showing promise in science, was sent for an internship in England to Cambridge at Rutherford's laboratory.
In 1928 he defended his doctoral dissertation there. Returning home from England, he stops in Berlin to see his mother.
While in Berlin, Yuliy Borisovich recalled, I was surprised at how frivolously the Germans treated Hitler. Then I realized that I needed to deal with explosives and defense problems in general.
Returning to Leningrad, Khariton continued to work at the Physico-Technical Institute. Here, under the guidance of Academician Semenov, he began to study the processes of detonation and explosion dynamics.
“Semyonov, recalls Khariton, had fantastic intuition. Until 1939, even before the discovery of uranium fission, he said that a nuclear explosion was possible, and in 1940 his young employee took Semenov’s letter outlining the principle of operation of the atomic bomb to the administration of the People’s Commissariat of the Oil Industry. There this letter was not taken seriously and was lost..."
In 1939, Yu. Khariton, together with Yakov Zeldovich, performed one of the first calculations of a nuclear chain reaction, which became the foundation of modern reactor physics and nuclear energy.
But then war broke out and Khariton continued to work with explosives.
In 1943, Igor Kurchatov told Khariton about the idea of creating an atomic bomb.
Khariton, together with Yakov Zeldovich, tried to determine the critical mass of uranium-235. It turned out to be about 10 kilograms. As it turned out later, they were mistaken by a factor of 5, but the main thing they came to the conclusion: it is possible to make a bomb!
In July 1945, the Americans tested the first nuclear explosive device at Los Alamos. Intelligence reports this to Stalin.
Immediately after the end of the war, Beria and Molotov flew to Berlin. Beria, with the consent of Stalin, was to lead the search in Germany for nuclear materials and specialist scientists who developed the German atomic bomb. A group of Soviet physicists is also heading here. Among them is Yuliy Khariton.
At the end of 1945, 200 qualified German nuclear scientists were transported to work in the Soviet Union.
In August 1945, the Americans dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Eliminating the US nuclear monopoly became the main task of the Soviet Union. Beria was entrusted with leading the atomic project.
Scientific leadership was entrusted to the forty-year-old Professor Khariton. He will become the father of the Soviet atomic bomb.
Previously, in pre-perestroika times, this role was attributed to Kurchatov; he did not want to give laurels to a Jew.
Academician Kurchatov actually carried out the coordination and general management of the project, but it was Yuli Borisovich Khariton who invented, developed and created the bomb. And, of course, his associates.
But why does a Jew, a non-party member, with a bad profile, who has not held any high positions, become the head of a team entrusted with a top-secret and extremely important matter? 
Yuliy Borisovich lived in this house
In 1950-1984. Moscow, Tverskaya st., 9
This remains a mystery to this day. By a special resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the top-secret design bureau KB-11, headed by Yu. Khariton, was formed to create an atomic bomb.
Finding a place for the design bureau was not easy. It would be nice to be in a bad place, but not more than 400 km from Moscow. It would be nice if there weren’t many people around, but there were production areas.
Finally, we found a small town with a military factory. It was Sarov in the south of the Gorky region. It was famous for its monastery, but against the backdrop of the enormous, nationally important tasks, the monastery and other historical monuments looked absurd.
By special government decree, the name Sarov was erased from all maps of the Soviet Union. The city was renamed “Arzamas-16,” and this name existed only in secret documents. The best scientists of the country were gathered here: physicists, mathematicians - the elite.
They built it without an estimate, based on actual costs. First point: barbed wire - 30 tons. Everything was surrounded by barbed wire. It was a zone.
The prisoners built it. And then scientific and technical personnel lived in this zone.
Not a single step without the permission of a special department, any contact, including acquaintance and marriage, any trip to relatives in a neighboring city. All the work and personal lives of KB-11 employees were monitored by specially authorized colonels of the MGB. They reported personally to Beria. And Beria did not hide the fact that if the atomic project failed, all physicists would be imprisoned or shot.
The laboratories were located in the monastery chambers. Industrial premises were hastily built nearby. There was no question of special conditions. While conventional explosive devices were created after numerous tests and trials, there was no such possibility here. Everything had to be experienced and tried in the mind. It turned out that to lead such work, what is needed is not a thunderer, but an easy-going, tolerant and seemingly soft Khariton. 
Postage stamp of Russia
Work proceeded in parallel on two projects, Russian and American, obtained by Soviet intelligence. Scouts from Lubyanka supplied Khariton with materials from their foreign residents. Even Kurchatov did not know the name of the Soviet agent Klaus Fuchs. The diagram sent by Fuchs gave only a principle, an idea. Khariton read these materials: it seemed that everything that the Americans were doing was logical, and yet he was haunted by the thought that this could be some kind of insidious espionage game, that the path indicated by an unknown foreign like-minded person would lead Soviet physicists to a dead end.
Therefore, all of Fuchs’s data was checked and rechecked. And yet Khariton believes that Fuchs saved them at least a year of work on the bomb. No matter how much they rushed, Stalin’s task to make a bomb by the beginning of 1948 remained unfulfilled.
Only by the beginning of 1949, a nuclear charge was brought from another secret city “Chelyabinsk-40”. No one has ever seen such a cargo: a plutonium ball with a diameter of 80-90 mm and a mass of 6 kg. There was only enough plutonium produced for one bomb.
In a nondescript one-story building, of which, unfortunately, only ruins remain today, and a memorial plaque should hang here, a control assembly of the product was carried out under the supervision of Khariton. The assembly act signed by Khariton has been preserved.
Before testing the atomic bomb, Kurchatov and Khariton were summoned by Stalin. He asked: “Isn’t it possible to make two bombs instead of one, albeit weaker ones?” “It’s impossible,” Khariton answered. "Technically this is impossible."
A letter train under the control of the MGB and the Ministry of Railways rushed the “product” and its creators from “Arzamas-16” to a small railway station in the Semipalatinsk area..
For safety reasons, Stalin banned Khariton from flying on airplanes. And Khariton always traveled only by train. A special carriage was built for him with a hall, an office, a bedroom and a compartment for guests, a kitchen, and a cook. Khariton’s closest associates in working on the bomb were traveling to the test site with Khariton on the train: Zeldovich, Franko-Kamenetsky, Flerov.
After 10 days we arrived at the training ground. A 37-meter tower was built at the training ground. The test was scheduled for August 29, 1949. All the test participants and members of the state commission headed by Beria gathered.
Khariton and his assistants assembled a plutonium charge and inserted neutron fuses. On command, the installers rolled the bomb out of the workshop and installed it in the elevator cage.
4:17 am. The charge began to rise onto the tower. There, at the top, they installed a fuse.
5 hours 55 minutes. Everyone descended from the tower, sealed the entrance, removed the guards and went to the command post, which was located 10 km from the epicenter of the explosion.
6 hours 48 minutes. Automatic detonation switched on. From that moment on, it was impossible to interfere with the process.
7.00. An atomic mushroom rises into the sky.
And the country lived its own life and knew nothing about the atomic explosion, nor about the fact that Kurchatov, Khariton, Zeldovich and other scientists were awarded the title of Heroes of Socialist Labor for the creation of the atomic bomb. They received Stalin Prizes.
Kurchatov and Khariton were given a ZIS-110 each, the rest were given a Pobeda. They were given dachas near Moscow and free rail travel was established.
An interesting fact is that the fathers of the Soviet and American atomic bombs were the Jews Khariton and Oppenheimer.
Oppenheimer experienced intense emotional distress after Hiroshima. Was Khariton tormented by the moral problem of using atomic weapons? Once journalist Golovanov asked Khariton: Yuliy Borisovich, and when you first saw this “mushroom”, and the roll of a hurricane, and blinded birds, and a light that is brighter than many suns, then the thought did not arise in you: “Lord, what are we?” are we doing?!!”
They were traveling in a special carriage. Khariton silently looked out the window. Then he said, without turning around: “It was necessary.”
Yes, he was a loyal soldier of the party.
Working closely with Beria during the creation of the atomic bomb, he did not dare to ask about the fate of his father, who was arrested by Beria’s subordinates. He said that this could have a negative impact on his work.
He signed a letter condemning Academician Sakharov, who worked under him for many years and was the creator of the hydrogen bomb. He lived half his life in a closed city, which no one in the country knew about, and communicated only with those whom the KGB allowed to see him. He gave his talent and his life to the service of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party, but when he died, only relatives and fellow scientists came to the funeral at the Novodevichy cemetery.
4638534_547pxHaritonmogilanovodevichye (547x599, 106Kb) 
Academician Khariton's grave
At the Novodevichy cemetery
None of the leaders of the state, for which three times Hero of Socialist Labor, three times laureate of the Stalin Prize, laureate of the Lenin Prize Khariton did something that determined the course of world history, came to the funeral.
The father of the Soviet atomic bomb, Yuli Borisovich Khariton, lived a long life. He died in 1996 at the age of 92.
Origin
Julius Borisovich Khariton was born in St. Petersburg on February 14 (February 27, new style) 1904 into a Jewish family. His father, Boris Osipovich Khariton, was a famous journalist expelled from the USSR in 1922, after Latvia joined the USSR in 1940, sentenced to 7 years in labor camp and died two years later in a camp]. Grandfather, Joseph Davidovich Khariton, was a merchant of the first guild in Feodosia; Father's sister, Etlya (Adele) Iosifovna Khariton, was married to historian Julius Isidorovich Gessen (their son is journalist and screenwriter Daniil Yulievich Gessen). A cousin (the son of his father’s other sister) is journalist and correspondent for Izvestia David Efremovich Yuzhin (real name Rakhmilovich; 1892-1939).
Mother, Mirra Yakovlevna Burovskaya (in her second marriage Eitingon; 1877-1947), was an actress (stage name Mirra Birens), played in the Moscow Art Theater in 1908-1910]. His parents divorced in 1907, when Yu. B. Khariton was a child, his mother remarried the psychoanalyst Mark Efimovich Eitingon in 1913 and left for Germany, from there in 1933 to Palestine. Boris Osipovich raised his son himself.
Biography
From 1920 to 1925 he was a student at the Electromechanical Faculty of the Polytechnic Institute, and from the spring of 1921 at the Faculty of Physics and Mechanics.
Since 1921 he worked at the Physico-Technical Institute under the leadership of Nikolai Semenov.
In 1926-1928, internship at the Cavendish Laboratory (Cambridge, England). Under the guidance of Ernest Rutherford and James Chadwick, he received a Doctor of Science degree (D.Sc., Doctor of Science), the topic of his dissertation was “On the counting of scintillations produced by alpha particles.”
From 1931 to 1946 - head of the explosion laboratory at the Institute of Chemical Physics, scientific work on detonation, combustion theory and explosion dynamics.
Since 1935 - Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (based on a combination of works).
In 1939-1941, Yuliy Khariton and Yakov Zeldovich first calculated the chain reaction of uranium fission.
Since 1946, Khariton has been the chief designer and scientific director of KB-11 (Arzamas-16) in Sarov at Laboratory No. 2 of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The best physicists of the USSR were brought in to work on the implementation of the nuclear weapons program under his leadership. In an atmosphere of the strictest secrecy, work was carried out in Sarov, culminating in the testing of Soviet atomic (August 29, 1949) and hydrogen (1953) bombs. In subsequent years, he worked on reducing the weight of nuclear charges, increasing their power and increasing reliability.
In 1955 he signed the “Letter of the Three Hundred”.
Member of the CPSU since 1956.
Since 1946 - corresponding member, since 1953 - academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR 3-11 convocations.
He was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow (section 9).