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Igor Kurchatov
Sign in to saveAlso known as Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov, I. V. Kurchatov, Igor Vasil’evich Kurchatov, Kurchatov
Soviet nuclear physicist (1903-1960)
Igor Kurchatov was a Soviet nuclear physicist who led the development of the Soviet Union's atomic bomb program during and after World War II. His work was crucial in establishing the Soviet Union as a nuclear power, which fundamentally shaped Cold War geopolitics.
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Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- Soviet Union
- Place of birth
- Sim
- Place of death
- Barvikha
- Occupation
- politician
- Political party
- Communist Party of the Soviet Union
- Languages spoken
- Russian
- Participant in
- 21st Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
- Doctoral advisor
- Vitaly Khlopin
- Student of
- Abram Ioffe
- Doctoral student
- Konstantin Petrzhak
- Field of work
- ferroelectricity
- Conflict
- Eastern Front
- Image
- Igor Kurchatov 001.png
Show 8 more facts
- Commons category
- Igor Kurchatov
- date of death
- 1960-02-07
- date of birth
- 1902-12-30
- member of
- Russian Academy of Sciences
- place of burial
- Kremlin Wall Necropolis
- student
- Vladimir Fyodorov
- maintained by WikiProject
- WikiProject Mathematics
- interested in
- nuclear physics
via Wikidata · CC0
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Encyclopedic overview
Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov (Russian: Игорь Васильевич Курчатов; 12 January 1903 [O.S. 30 December 1902] – 7 February 1960) was a Soviet physicist who played a central role in organizing and directing the former Soviet program of nuclear weapons. He has been called the "father of the Russian atomic bomb".
As many of his contemporaries in Russia, Kurchatov, initially educated as a naval architect, was an autodidact in nuclear physics and was brought by Soviet establishment to accelerate the feasibility of the "super bomb". Aided by effective intelligence management by Soviet agencies on the American Manhattan Project, Kurchatov oversaw the quick development and testing of the first Soviet nuclear weapon, which was roughly based on the first American device, at Semipalatinsk in the Kazakh SSR in 1949.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Igor Kurchatov” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.