Kurchatov. Part 1. Demiurge of the core
In August 1945, two nuclear mushrooms rose over Japan, a state neighboring the Soviet Union. For the Soviet Government, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an unequivocal warning that the redivision of the world was not completed with the end of the war, which means that the threat of encroachment on Soviet soil continues to exist …
… there are no great talents without great will …
O. Balzac
The test in 1949 of the first Soviet atomic bomb came as a big surprise to the West. The bomb was created by a group of nuclear physicists under the leadership of Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov, a brilliant organizer, a great experimental scientist who had a unique ability to attract people of various professions to the development of nuclear projects. For the first time in Russian atomic science, he managed to combine Russian theoretical scientific thought with its engineering embodiment.
During the Second World War, the USSR suffered irreparable human losses and huge material losses. Having emerged victorious, the country was weakened - cities and villages were destroyed, mines were blown up, the earth was scorched and pitted with bomb craters.
In August 1945, two nuclear mushrooms rose over Japan, a state neighboring the Soviet Union. For the Soviet Government, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an unequivocal warning that with the end of the war the redivision of the world was not completed, which means that the threat of encroachment on Soviet soil continues to exist.
Only weapons that were not inferior to American atomic bombs could balance military forces and prevent possible aggression. His invention was entrusted to a laboratory headed by the nuclear physicist Igor Vasilievich Kurchatov.
Those who knew Kurchatov claim that he was a very energetic person, as if the process of a nuclear reaction was going on in him. Today, the West is trying to present the "father" of the Russian atomic bomb as a carrier of destructive power. But for our country, his activities were of a defensive nature and were constructive.
Scientists of the Soviet Union were forced to develop atomic weapons to create the state's nuclear shield.
On the question of the radioactivity of snow
Igor Vasilyevich was born in the Urals in the family of a forester's assistant. His ancestors were serfs, taken from the Moscow region to the Southern Urals in the Simsky iron foundry. The grandfather, who got out of the ordinary mining workers in the factory treasurers and gave Igor's father a small secondary education, could not even think that his grandson would become a world famous scientist.
Only his father, Vasily Alekseevich, worked in the Kurchatov family. Mother “graduated from college with the right to the title of home teacher, before marriage she worked for some time as a teacher's assistant” (P. Astashenkov “Kurchatov”). After marriage, she left the profession of a home teacher, devoting herself to children - Antonina, Igor and Boris.
In 1912, the family moved to Crimea due to tuberculosis discovered in their daughter, but they could not save her. The financial situation in the family, already difficult, became even more complicated with the outbreak of the First World War. To earn money, both brothers every summer vacation go with their father to remote regions of the Crimea for land surveying.
The father is not able to feed the family, and Igor, in an urethral manner, takes responsibility for its maintenance. He is ready to take up tutoring, but there are no students on the outskirts of Simferopol, where the Kurchatovs live. After classes at the gymnasium, the boy studies in a mouthpiece workshop from wood scraps to cut mouthpieces for sale in a tobacco shop.
Then he decides to master plumbing and, having agreed with the owner of the locksmith's shop, learns to work with metal. There Igor receives his first craft and engineering skills, which will be useful to him in the future when creating a cyclotron and other equipment for the first laboratory nuclear research.
In 1920, Igor Kurchatov graduated from the gymnasium with excellent marks and entered the physics and mathematics faculty of the Tavrichesky University, which at that time was almost equal to those in the capital. The faculty was headed by famous scientists V. I. Vernadsky and A. A. Baikov, who gathered a strong teaching staff. Physics lectures were sometimes given by a professor of the Petrograd Polytechnic University A. F. Ioffe.
Having mastered a four-year university course in three years, Kurchatov, greedy for knowledge, went to Petrograd to continue his studies at the Polytech. In violation of the instructions of the People's Commissariat for Education, he was enrolled in the third year of the shipbuilding faculty, of course, without a scholarship.
There were no means of subsistence, and Igor finds work in Pavlovsk. The local magnetic and meteorological observatory needed an employee. Kurchatov was hired, and soon the enthusiastic student was already conducting independent research and writing his first report: "On the question of the radioactivity of snow." In the future, the topic of radioactivity will become the leading one in his scientific activities.
In the mid-1920s, dozens of ingenious sonic heads began with similar experiments in order to come close to creating the deadliest weapon on earth in 20 years.
To a short but detailed work on the radioactivity of snow, an overview list of the world literature on this topic was added. In the future, before embarking on a particular project, Igor Vasilyevich will carefully study the works of famous scientists and researchers.
Sound concentration and analytical ability will help him and his group understand the reasons for the victories and defeats of Western scientists in order to avoid their own mistakes and significantly reduce the time and funds allocated for the creation of the first Soviet atomic bomb. Later it will become known that among physicists of the second half of the twentieth century it was difficult to find a person more knowledgeable in the field of the atomic nucleus than I. V. Kurchatov.
Physics won
Tests by hunger and cold did not cool Kurchatov's passion for science, moreover, it was at the Pavlovsk Observatory that he finally understood that his vocation was physics, not ships. Classes at the university receded into the background and expulsion was not long in coming, but the second scientific work was already ready for publication.
With an assignment from the observatory, Kurchatov goes to the Feodosiya weather station to study changes in sea level. But the future "hero of science" is already attracted further by that unknown force, which, as a result, will lead him to the group of "Pope" Ioffe, so that he becomes a nuclear physicist, a world-famous scientist. In the fall, Igor moved to Baku and began working as an assistant to the professor of the Baku Polytechnic Institute S. N. Usatii.
As a person with a urethral-sound ligament of vectors, Kurchatov is attracted by new, unexplored topics in science. The urethral always goes forward, he is a man of the new world, a discoverer of unknown lands, a researcher of solid electrolysis or nuclear reactions.
The urethra and sound are dominant, but not the only vectors of Kurchatov. The owner of such a ligament in its pure form is always in the zone of psychological risk. Additional vectors enhance the stability of the urethral-sound polymorph, which we observe in the example of Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov. A bright, passionate, fantastically efficient, with a sharp scientific mind and tremendous organizational skills, a person with a fast-paced scientific career and a "thermonuclear reaction inside."
A year later, the success of the young scientist became known in Leningrad. Academician A. F. Ioffe invited Igor to the post of research assistant at the Leningrad Institute of Physics and Technology. Ioffe himself was the core of the attraction for talented youth. In 10 years, I. V. Kurchatov.
It is known from systemic vector psychology that a person with a urethral vector is always in the center of attention of a pack. Kurchatov not only gave work to physicists and other specialists in need, he gave young people a chance to reveal themselves, to fill their own sound voids, "in a leader's way" guaranteeing them a sense of security and safety, which was so necessary during the Stalinist purges.
At 24, he became not only a research scientist, but also began teaching. While still a very young man himself, he strove to interest students in his research, to attract new talented and promising young people to science.
Department of Nuclear Physics
1932 is often called the year of nuclear physics. It was marked by a number of world discoveries in this area. The time has come for nuclear reactions. The new field of science suddenly interested Kurchatov. This fact additionally confirms the ability of Igor Vasilyevich to keep his finger on the pulse of time and speaks of his sound intuition as a scientist.
After the successful discoveries of a number of substances that give rise to new directions in solid state physics, Igor Vasil'evich, without protection, receives a doctorate in physics and mathematics, and Phystech progressed Kurchatov to the corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences. An unexpectedly successful scientist leaves this area of research in favor of a completely new and little understood atomic nucleus.
In 1933, the "Special Nuclear Group", in which scientists experimented, was transformed into the Department of Nuclear Physics. Igor Kurchatov is appointed its head. In addition, he takes over the head of the nuclear reactions laboratory in the same department and plunges headlong into work. Four-dimensional urethral power combined with sound resulted in the highest performance and concentration.
Kurchatov works excitedly, as if he is afraid to miss something important. He is so passionate about research that he forgets about food and water. The sound engineer is abstracted from the outside world and is busy with immersion in himself. Igor Vasilievich was focused on the collective success of the entire department.
"General" Kurchatov
Subordinates and colleagues in research work noted the phenomenal competence of Igor Kurchatov and were amazed at his fantastic performance. He was able to fully cover the research of nuclear physics and keep abreast of all the news in this area, thanks to the control over all laboratories in the USSR. In his country, Kurchatov knew everything about nuclear development.
Thanks to familiarization with the documents of intelligence on the topic of nuclear weapons, received from the department of L. P. Beria and other sources, he knew a lot of what was being done in this direction in America and Europe.
The received information streams merged into a single one, forming a kind of synthesis of knowledge that helped him and his team move further in the work on the Atomic project. For his remarkable organizational skills, the very young Igor was nicknamed "the general". Despite the "general" rank, Kurchatov did not command.
Kurchatov's charm was so great that he was admired not only by women, but also by men. He had an insatiable desire to expand science and get results. “Joyful, cheerful, mischievous, lover of practical jokes” - this is how his colleagues remembered. Igor Vasilyevich even gave instructions to the team easily and cheerfully: “The task is set. Rest, guys!"
When a person is fulfilled and filled with the results of his favorite work, he feels comfortable and confident. There was not a single problem that Igor Vasilyevich could not solve. He knew how to lead, organizing the whole process so exciting that his subordinates, like himself, lost track of time, working day and night.
Kurchatov had a rare gift in an ordinary employee to discern a future scientist and even an academician. Hiring a newcomer to work in his department or laboratory, he gradually revealed his abilities.
He promoted people not on the principles of anal nepotism or skin dexterity with a distant aim: "you - me, I - you." If Kurchatov noticed a young talented specialist, he patronized him in an urethral way, as a leader would do in his flock: preserving, protecting, deservedly raising the rank.
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