Who did Yulii Khariton work for from 1921 to 1931?
Yulii Khariton Yulii Borisovich Khariton ( Russian : Юлий Борисович Харитон , 27 February 1904 – 19 December 1996 ) was a Russian physicist and a leading scientist in the Soviet Unions nuclear weapons program . Since the initiation of the atomic bomb project by Joseph Stalin in 1943 , Khariton was the chief Nuclear weapon designer and remained associated with the Soviet program for nearly four decades . In honour of the centennial of his birthday in 2004 , his image appeared on a Russian postal stamp by the Russian government . Biography . Family , early life and education . Yulii Borisovich Khariton was born in Saint Petersburg , Russian Empire to an ethnic middle class Russian Jewish family , on 27 February 1904 . His father , Boris Osipovich Khariton , was a political journalist , an editor , and a publisher , who had attained a law degree from Kiev University in Ukraine . His father worked for the newspaper Rech , the main organ of the Constitutional Democratic Party , and was a well known figure in the political circles of Russia . After the Russian revolution dismantled the Tsarist autocracy in 1917 , Boris Khariton had clashes with the Bolsheviks as he was at odds with Vladimir Lenins Soviet ideology . His father was exiled to Baltic states from Russia in 1922 at the age of forty six along with professors and journalists on one of the so-called Philosophers ships , subsequently working for an emigrant newspaper in Latvia . His father , Boris Khariton , remained there until Latvias annexation by the Soviet Union in 1940 and , at the age of sixty-four , was then arrested by the NKVD and sentenced to seven years of forced labour in a Gulag where he died . Yuliis mother , Mirra Yakovlevna Burovskaya , was a theatre actress who performed at the Moscow Art Theatre . She left Russia in 1910 due to an illness that had to be treated at the European resort . Yulii was six years old when his mother left him and was taken care by an Estonian woman , hired by his father while in exile in Latvia . Yuliis mother never returned to Russia and divorced his father , only to marry her psychiatrist , Dr . Max Eitingon . Having lived in Germany , Mirra moved to Tel Aviv in Palestine in 1933 , where she remained until her death . She is buried in Jerusalem . Yulii was forbidden to contact his parents after he had started classified work in the Soviet Union . His travels were highly restricted by the Soviet Union and later by Russia . Yulii was home schooled by his Estonian housekeeper , hired by his father , who taught him German language . At the age of eleven , he began attending regular school . In Saint Petersburg , he went to attend a trade school which he completed at the age of fifteen and found work at a local mechanical workshop where he learned how to operate various machinery as a machinist . In 1920 , he enrolled in the Leningrad Polytechnical Institute to study mechanical engineering but later chose to study physics , which he found to be more stimulating . He studied physics under Russian physicists , Abram Ioffe , Nikolay Semyonov , and Alexander Friedmann . Khariton was particularly fascinated with the work of Semenov whose research used the techniques of physics in chemistry , which Semenov called chemical physics. . Kharitons talent was recognised by Semenov who supported his research project in investigations of the light-emitting ability of phosphorus combined with oxygen , and reported the results in both German and Russian languages . In 1926 , Khariton completed his degree in physics from the Leningrad Polytechnical Institute and ended his research project as he prepared for his first foreign trip to England . Before departing , he was introduced to Pyotr Kapitsa by Semenov who asked the latter to help Yulii secure a fellowship at the Cavendish Laboratory in England . In England , Khariton attended the University of Cambridge to do his doctoral in physics under Ernest Rutherford in 1926 . At Cambridge , he worked with James Chadwick on investigating the sensitivity of the eye with respect to weak light impulses and alpha radiation . Khariton earned his PhD in 1928 from Cambridge University . Soviet atomic bomb project . In 1928 , Khariton decided to take up the residence in ( Germany ) to be near his mother , but was appalled and frightened by the political propaganda of the Nazi Party in Germany ; therefore returning to Soviet Union while his mother left for Palestine . In 1931 , he joined the Institute of Chemical Physics and eventually headed the explosion laboratory until 1946 , working closely with another Russian physicist Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich , on exothermic chemical chain reactions . In 1935 , he received his doctorate in physical and mathematical sciences . During this period , Khariton and Zeldovich conducted experiments on the chain reactions of uranium . In August 1939 , Zeldovich , Khariton and Aleksandr Leipunskii delivered papers on the theoretical process behind nuclear fission chain reactions at a conference in Kharkiv , Ukraine ; this was the last pre-war discussion of chain reactions in the USSR . During World War II , Kharitons knowledge of the physics of explosions was used in experimental studies on Soviet and foreign weaponry , while continuing his leadership of the Institute of Chemical Physics . Physicist Igor Kurchatov asked Khariton to become part of the Soviet atomic project in 1943 , in Laboratory No . 2 of the Russian Academy of Sciences . In May 1945 , as part of a team of physicists sent to Berlin to investigate Nazi atomic bomb research , Khariton found 100 tonnes of uranium oxide , which was transported back to Moscow ; this reduced development time for domestic plutonium production . After the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki , a Special Committee was established including Kurchatov and Khariton . Khariton was made scientific director of KB-11 ( design bureau-11 ) also known as Arzamas-16 and colloquially as the Installation , located in the closed city of Sarov , Nizhny Novgorod Oblast to develop Soviet nuclear weapons ( the organisation is now known as the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics ( VNIIEF ) . Khariton remained as its scientific director for 46 years . Along with other senior scientists , he was regarded as too important to fly and had his own private train carriage . He was elected as a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1946 , and as a full member in 1953 . In 1949 , he and Kirill Shchelkin reported to the Special Committee on the progress of the first Soviet nuclear weapon , the RDS-1 , which was tested on 29 August that year . He was deferential to political superiors but supported the scientists under him in a politic and diplomatic way . Physicist and departmental head Andrei Sakharov referred to him as being zealous and unsparing of himself. ; he spoke for scientists when they changed their focus to a two-stage nuclear device with initial compression from 1954 ( the RDS-37 ) and supported requests not to detonate the RDS-220 ( the largest-ever bomb ) because of the calculated number of deaths due to radioactive fallout . He would not support similar requests to halt a duplicate test by a second Installation at Snezhinsk which he felt was divisive , and wouldnt intercede in certain politically-charged personal cases . His diplomacy meant absorbing criticism and put-downs from political leaders who came and went . KB-11 was sometimes sneered at for having a significant number of staff with Jewish backgrounds , Khariton included . The second Installation under Yevgeny Zababakhin had fewer , and there had been awkward professional relations ; it was comically referred to as Egypt by politicians , with obvious comparative implications with KB-11 : the dining room at KB-11 was termed the synagogue . Awards and legacy . - Hero of Socialist Labor ( 1949 , 1951 , 1954 ) - Stalin Prize ( 1949 , 1951 , 1953 ) - Order of Lenin ( 1949 , 1956 , 1962 , 1964 , 1974 , 1984 ) - Lenin Prize ( 1956 ) - Order of the October Revolution ( 1971 ) - Order of the Red Banner of Labor ( 1945 ) - Order of the Red Star ( 1944 ) - Gold Medal of I . V . Kurchatov ( 1974 ) - Great Gold Medal of M . V . Lomonosov ( 1982 ) In October 1997 in Sarov , Togliati Street was renamed Akademik Khariton Street in his honour . A bronze bust of him was installed on February 2004 next to the House of Scientists of VNIIEF . In 2004 , a Russian stamp was issued for the anniversary of his 100th birthday .