Igor Kurchatov

Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov (Russian: Игорь Васильевич Курчатов; 12 January 1903 [O.S. 30 December 1902] – 7 February 1960) was a Soviet physicist who played a central role directing Laboratory No. 2, the research institute of the Soviet nuclear weapons program. He has been called the "father of the Russian atomic bomb".

Kurchatov graduated Leningrad Polytechnic Institute as a naval architect. As many of his contemporaries in Russia, he was an autodidact in nuclear physics and was brought by Soviet establishment to accelerate the feasibility of the "super bomb". Aided by Soviet nuclear espionage on the US Manhattan Project, Kurchatov oversaw the development and testing of the first Soviet research reactor, F-1, plutonium production reactor, A-1, and nuclear weapon, RDS-1, the latter at Semipalatinsk in the Kazakh SSR in 1949, and roughly based on the US Fat Man bomb.

Kurchatov, a recipient of many former Soviet honors, had an instrumental role in modern nuclear industry in Russia. His rapid decline in health is mainly attributed to a 1949 radiation accident in Chelyabinsk-40. Kurchatov died in Moscow in 1960, aged 57.