— Ch. 1 · Moscow Birth And Family Roots —
Andrei Sakharov.
~6 min read · Ch. 1 of 8
Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov entered the world on the 21st of May 1921 in Moscow. His father, Dmitri Ivanovich Sakharov, worked as a physics professor at the Second Moscow State University and played piano as an amateur hobby. The grandfather named Ivan served as a lawyer within the former Russian Empire. He advocated for social awareness and humanitarian principles including the abolition of capital punishment. Sakharov's mother Yekaterina Alekseevna Sofiano descended from Aleksey Semenovich Sofiano who held the rank of general in the Tsarist Russian Army with Greek heritage. Maria Petrovna his paternal grandmother largely shaped his personality alongside his parents. Both his mother and grandmother belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church while his father remained a non-believer. When Andrei reached age thirteen he realized that he did not believe in God despite this atheism he maintained belief in a guiding principle transcending physical laws.
The Layered Cake Design
Sakharov joined the Soviet atomic bomb project under Igor Kurchatov and Igor Tamm in mid-1948. His study group developed a second concept during August and September 1948. They added a shell of natural unenriched uranium around deuterium to increase yield. This layered fission-fusion-fission bomb design led Sakharov to call it the sloika or layered cake. The first Soviet atomic device tested on the 29th of August 1949 utilized this approach. After moving to Sarov in 1950 Sakharov played a key role developing the first megaton-range Soviet hydrogen bomb using what Russia called Sakharov's Third Idea. Before this breakthrough he tried a layer cake of alternating layers yielding disappointing results no more powerful than typical fission bombs. He realized radiation could compress fusion fuel symmetrically if reflected by a mirror. His idea first tested as RDS-37 appeared in 1955. A larger variation became the 50 Mt Tsar Bomba detonated in October 1961 as the most powerful nuclear device ever exploded.