Andrei Sakharov educated at MSU Faculty of Physics
Biography
Family background and early life
Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov was born in Moscow on 21 May 1921. His father, Dmitri Ivanovich Sakharov, a physics professor at the Second Moscow State University and an amateur pianist. His grandfather, Ivan, was a lawyer in the former Russian Empire who had displayed respect for social awareness and humanitarian principles (including advocating the abolition of capital punishment). Sakharov's mother was Yekaterina Alekseevna Sofiano was a daughter of the Aleksey Semenovich Sofiano– a general in the Tsarist Russian Army.Sakharov's parents and paternal grandmother, Maria Petrovna, largely shaped his personality; his mother and grandmother were members of Russian Orthodox Church although his father was a nonbeliever. When Andrei was about thirteen, he realized that he did not believe. However, despite being an atheist, he did believe in a "guiding principle" that transcends the physical laws.After schooling, Sakharov studied physics at the Moscow State University in 1938 and, following evacuation in 1941 during the Eastern Front with Germany, he graduated in Aşgabat in Turkmenistan. In 1943, he married Klavdia Alekseyevna Vikhireva, with whom he raised two daughters and a son. Klavdia would later die in 1969. In 1945, he joined the Theoretical Department of Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences under Igor Tamm in Moscow. In 1947, Sakharov was successful in defending this thesis for the Doctor of Sciences (lit. Doktor Nauk), which covered the topic of nuclear transmutation.
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