The day before, a memorial meeting was held on Kurchatov Square in Moscow near the monument erected there to the “father” of the atomic project in the USSR. Employees and guests who came to the Kurchatov Institute paid tribute to Academician Igor Kurchatov who was born January 12, 1903.
It is difficult to enumerate all the merits of Igor Kurchatov to the Fatherland and the Russian people, but the most important thing in his life was “creation of the atomic shield.” It was with these words that Alexander Blagov, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and vice president of the Kurchatov Institute, opened the rally near the institute, which now bears the name of this great scientist, as the Izvestia newspaper reports.
In his speech Blagov emphasized that Kurchatov and his colleagues were only a little over forty years old when the scientist was working on the atomic project. A huge responsibility rested on his shoulders, because at that time the world already knew about the monstrous bombing of Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the Americans. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed in the atomic conflagration and many more suffered from the radiation, becoming painfully ill and dying over the following years. To date, this is the only combat use of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict.
The Soviet leadership, well aware of the threat posed by such weapons to its anti-Hitler coalition ally at the time, set the scientists the primary task of creating nuclear weapons to defend the country's independence. The first test of the Soviet atomic bomb was successfully conducted in August 1949 at the Semipalatinsk test site. Either because of the weather or for reasons of secrecy, Kurchatov moved the testing time to 7 a.m. local time. The atomic cloud rose over the test site at exactly the appointed time. For his atomic weapons invention Kurchatov was presented with Stalin prize, a golden star of a Hero of Socialist Labor and a ZIS car and a furnished mansion.
The creation and testing of the Soviet atomic bomb took place much earlier than the Americans could have anticipated. The scientists were jubilant because it was hard for them to hide their emotions. They were well aware of how important the creation of nuclear weapons was for the Soviet Union. It was then, thanks to the titanic work of a large team of scientists, that the U.S. monopoly on nuclear weapons was destroyed.
Before that, there were years of hard work, and we should not forget that after the war, the country had to rebuild itself, rebuilding plants and factories. It is known that in the USSR not a single medical thermometer was produced for several years, because all the mercury was used for the nuclear project. Kurchatov knew this and was well aware of the sacrifices the Soviet Union was making to defend its independence.
Kurchatov was not only a talented man, but was able to educate a whole pleiad of scientists, skillfully guided them, guided, prompted and valued them. He worked together with such scientists as Andrei Sakharov and Yuly Khariton. The thermonuclear hydrogen bomb was created by these scientists and successfully tested in 1953.
However, while working on the development of atomic weapons, Kurchatov was already thinking about the peaceful use of the atom. It was he who came up with the idea of making the atom work for the benefit of mankind. “The atom must become a worker, not a soldier,” said Kurchatov. This statement became well-known in many countries. Kurchatov himself proposed to use the atom for peaceful purposes. It is known that under his direct supervision the world's first nuclear power plant in Obninsk was launched. Industrial current was already available in summer 1954.
Such a fact from the life of this remarkable person should also be mentioned, because it characterizes Kurchatov as a personality to the fullest. He did not agree with the opinion of Nikita Khrushchev and called to stop nuclear weapons testing, knowing full well what kind of harm it was to the environment. He was a courageous and brave person and was not at all afraid of disgrace.
Few people know another fact from Kurchatov's life. He saved genetics as a science, which in those years, as known, was not recognized and called “pseudoscience.” Kurchatov took courage and sheltered a group of geneticists within the walls of his institute allowing them to work normally. Only thanks to this courageous act of academician Kurchatov in the USSR at the end of the 1960s the independent institutes in this field started working again.
In the middle of 1950s Kurchatov and his deputy academician A.P. Alexandrov were working out in the State Committee programs of nuclear power development, which provided for the use of atomic energy not only in power industry, but also in transport and other branches of national economy.
In 1958, the first nuclear submarine Leninsky Komsomol was built and launched. The scientists' developments gave an impetus to the construction of nuclear icebreakers, which successfully paved the way for transport ships in the waters of the Arctic Ocean.
In the last years of his life, Kurchatov suffered two strokes. Strenuous work on the project affected him. Even in spite of that, he returned to scientific work, continued working on nuclear power plants. But more and more he had to spend his time in hospitals. His heart suddenly stopped when he was sitting on a snow-covered bench near Barvikha, a destination spa with medical services near Moscow. The great scientist passed away at the age of 57. According to colleagues of Kurchatov, this loss was irreplaceable. It was Kurchatov who said that “human life is not eternal, but science and knowledge transcend centuries.” And the way Kurchatov lived his life selflessly confirms this truth.
Coincidentally, today, January 13, Russia celebrates the 120th anniversary of Igor Kurchatov's friend and colleague, the person who can rightly be called the “father” of the Soviet atomic fleet, Anatoly Alexandrov. It was he who led the Kurchatov Institute for almost 30 years, while heading the Academy of Sciences of the USSR from 1975 to 1986.
Now nuclear power plants operate in many countries and Russia, as the legal successor of the USSR, assists in the construction and maintenance of these complex facilities, ranking first in the world for the construction of plants abroad. It is Russia that controls 40% of uranium enrichment in the world market. Since Russia is a strong power guarded by the nuclear triad, the countries of Western Europe and the US have to reckon with it. Academician Kurchatov and his colleagues at the Kurchatov Institute laid the foundation for this.