Andrei Sakharov

Theoretical Physicist & Human Rights Activist · Soviet/Russian 🇷🇺 · 1921–1989

Father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, who then became the USSR's most prominent dissident and won the Nobel Peace Prize for campaigning against nuclear weapons.

✌️

Cold WarEra

🏅

1Nobel Prizes

🎂

1921Born

✝

1989Died

01 Biography

Andrei Sakharov was born in Moscow in 1921 and became the principal designer of the Soviet hydrogen bomb - the RDS-37 (1955) and Tsar Bomba (1961), the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated. Witnessing the effects of nuclear testing firsthand, he underwent a moral transformation. From the 1960s onwards, he campaigned relentlessly for nuclear disarmament, openness (glasnost), and human rights - at enormous personal cost. He was stripped of his Soviet honours, placed under house arrest in Gorky for seven years (1980–1986), and his wife Elena Bonner was also persecuted. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975; the Soviets refused to let him travel to collect it. Mikhail Gorbachev personally called him in exile in 1986 to tell him he was free.

02 Key Achievements

→Principal designer of Soviet hydrogen bomb

→Nobel Peace Prize (1975)

→Campaigned for nuclear test ban treaties

→Prominent USSR dissident and human rights activist

→Proposed concept of "convergence" of East and West

→Elected to Soviet Congress of Peoples Deputies (1989)

03 Notable Quote

"I am convinced that international trust, mutual understanding, disarmament, and international security are inconceivable without an open society."
- Andrei Sakharov

04 Legacy

Sakharov's transformation from weapons designer to peace activist is one of the most remarkable journeys in 20th-century history. The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, awarded by the European Parliament, is named in his honour.