Short answers, pulled from the story.
Andrei Sakharov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975 for his work emphasizing human rights around the world. The Norwegian Nobel Committee called him "a spokesman for the conscience of mankind" and cited his argument that human rights provide the only safe foundation for genuine international cooperation.
Sakharov was a key figure in developing the first megaton-range Soviet hydrogen bomb, working at the Sarov weapons facility from 1950. His design, known in Russia as Sakharov's Third Idea and comparable to the Teller-Ulam design in the United States, used radiation implosion to symmetrically compress fusion fuel. The design was first tested as RDS-37 in 1955, and a larger version became the 50-megaton Tsar Bomba, detonated in October 1961.
Sakharov was arrested on the 22nd of January 1980 and sent to Gorky, now called Nizhny Novgorod, following his public protests against the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979. Gorky was a city closed to foreigners, effectively cutting him off from international contacts. He remained there under police surveillance until Mikhail Gorbachev called him on the 19th of December 1986 to say he could return to Moscow.
The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought is awarded annually by the European Parliament to people and organizations dedicated to human rights. It was established in December 1985, while Sakharov was still in internal exile. A separate Andrei Sakharov Prize is awarded every second year by the American Physical Society to scientists who have shown outstanding leadership in upholding human rights, beginning in 2006.
Sakharov identified three conditions required for matter to dominate over antimatter in the universe: baryon number violation, C-symmetry and CP-symmetry violation, and interactions out of thermal equilibrium. He was also the first to give a theoretical motivation for proton decay and the first to consider CPT-symmetric events occurring before the Big Bang. These conditions are still known today as the Sakharov conditions.
Sakharov died on the 14th of December 1989 in Moscow. He had gone to his study shortly after 9 p.m. to rest before preparing a speech for the Congress of People's Deputies the following day. His wife Yelena Bonner found him dead on the floor at 11 p.m. Pathologist Yakov Rapoport concluded he most likely died of an arrhythmia arising from dilated cardiomyopathy. He was 68 years old and is buried at the Vostryakovskoye Cemetery in Moscow.