Sakharov, Andrei Dimitriyevich 1921-89
Soviet physicist, dissident and Nobel Prize winner

Born in Moscow, the son of a scientist, he graduated in physics from Moscow State University in 1942 and was awarded a doctorate for work on cosmic rays. He worked under Igor Tamm at the Lebdev Institute in Leningrad (now St Petersburg). He took a leading part in the development of the Soviet hydrogen bomb and in 1953 became the youngest-ever entrant to the Soviet Academy of Sciences. During the early 1960s he became increasingly estranged from the Soviet authorities when he campaigned for a nuclear test-ban treaty, peaceful international co-existence and improved civil rights within the USSR. In 1975 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and in 1980, during a period of Soviet oppression of dissidents, he was sent into internal exile in the 'closed city' of Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod). Here he undertook a series of hunger strikes in an effort to secure permission for his wife, Yelena Bonner, to receive medical treatment overseas. He was eventually released in 1986 under the personal orders of Mikhail Gorbachev. He continued to campaign for improved civil rights and in 1989 he was elected to the Congress of the USSR People's Deputies. His non-scientific writing includes Progress, Co-existence and Intellectual Freedom (1968) and Alarm and Hope (1978).

Bibliography: George Bailey, The Making of Andrei Sakharov (1989)