July Borisovich Chariton

July Borisovich Chariton

July Borisovich Chariton ( Russian Юлий Борисович Харитон , English transliteration Yulii (or Yuli) Borisovich Khariton, * February 14 ^jul. / 27. February  1904 ^greg. In Saint Petersburg , † 19 December 1996 in Sarov ) was a Soviet physicist who worked in the country's nuclear weapons program .

Life

Chariton came from Jewish intellectual circles in Saint Petersburg, his father was a journalist and director of the House of Writers in Saint Petersburg, his mother an actress. From 1920 he studied at the Polytechnic Institute in Saint Petersburg and was invited by Nikolai Semjonow in 1921 to work in the Department of Chemical Physics at Abram Joffe's Physics-Technical Institute (later the Joffe Institute ) . From 1926 to 1928 he was with Ernest Rutherford and James Chadwick in Cambridge at the famous Cavendish Laboratory . In the 1930s he also worked on nuclear physics at the Joffe Institute (from 1929 to 1939 he was director of the laboratory for chemical physics and explosives at the institute), which was then expanded as a current research area to become a focus of the institute. At the end of the 1930s, he and Jakow Seldowitsch calculated the conditions for a chain reaction in uranium and critical masses. In the early stages of World War II , he worked on anti-tank weapons and inexpensive explosives.

In the 1940s he was the chief designer in the Soviet atomic bomb project under Igor Kurchatov , who was only a year older than Chariton and his close friend (Chariton was the only one present when Kurchatov died on a park bench in 1960). He was the first scientific director of the secret nuclear weapons research center in Sarov, under the cover name Arzamas-16, which was founded in 1946. He was in charge of it for 45 years until 1992 when he retired. During this time, Andrei Sakharov , Seldowitsch and others developed the Soviet hydrogen bomb there . As head of the laboratory, Chariton reported directly to the intelligence chief, Beria . Stalin himself instructed Chariton to always be accompanied by a bodyguard who was also his servant. After the Second World War, Chariton was no longer allowed to travel abroad, but a train with a saloon car was available to him at any time until his death .

Chariton was a three-time hero of socialist work and received the Lomonosov gold medal in 1982 for his scientific merits . He was married and had a daughter. His resting place is in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

Awards

• Hero of Socialist Labor (1949, 1951, 1954)
• Winner of the Stalin Prize (1949, 1951, 1953)
• Winner of the Lenin Prize (1956)
• five orders of Lenin
• Bearer of the Order of the October Revolution
• Bearer of the Order of the Red Banner of Labor
• Bearer of the Order of the Red Star
• Carrier of the Lomonosov Gold Medal (1982)

literature

• David Holloway: Stalin and the Bomb. Yale University Press, New Haven 1994, ISBN 0-585-36154-1 .

Web links

• biography
• photo
• Obituary in The Independent
• Article July Borissowitsch Chariton in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BSE) , 3rd edition 1969–1978 (Russian)http: //vorlage_gse.test/1%3D118493~2a%3D~2b%3DJuli%20Borissowitsch%20Chariton

Remarks

1. ↑ Internally also called "Volga Office" or, half-jokingly, "Los Arzamas", based on Los Alamos . The city of Arzamas is about 80 km further north. The names were used for camouflage. The name Sarov then disappeared from all maps. After the collapse of the Soviet Union , the city was renamed again.
2. ↑ Before the first hydrogen bomb test by the Russians on November 1, 1952, the pressure on Beria was high: he sent the mathematicians Michail Lavrentjew and Alexander Ilyushin to Arzamas, who should replace Chariton if they failed.
3. ↑ In 1945 he was briefly in occupied Germany as NKVD colonel to find scientists and resources for the Soviet nuclear weapons program. Among others, the physicist Gustav Hertz and Peter Adolf Thiessen , head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry, were brought to the Soviet Union.