Cold War Biographies | Igor Kurchatov Biography

Born January 8, 1903
Simskii Zavod,
Southern Ural Mountains, Russia
Died February 1960
St. Sarov (or Arzamas-16),
Russia, Soviet Union

Nuclear physicist and
developer of the Soviet atomic bomb

Abrilliant nuclear physicist, Igor Kurchatov headed the development of the atomic bomb in the Soviet Union. Kurchatov's successful development of the bomb played an important role in Cold War politics. The Cold War was an intense political and economic rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union that lasted from 1945 to 1991. When the United States discovered by way of spy planes that the Soviet Union had detonated its first atomic bomb, it felt compelled to accelerate its own nuclear weapons program. Like his American counterpart, J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967; see entry), Kurchatov in his later years stressed that atomic energy should only...