Lavrentiev Oleg. Father of the hydrogen bomb

In 1948, Oleg Lavrentiev, a sergeant in one of the units located on Sakhalin, sent a letter to Stalin with a single phrase: "I know the secret of the hydrogen bomb." At that time, the USSR did not even have an atomic bomb, while the idea of a hydrogen bomb, according to Sakharov's memoirs, had "a very vague outline." The first letter in the secretariat of the leader was ignored, and after the second, a colonel of the NKVD was sent to the unit where the young sergeant served, who, having checked the adequacy of the author, took him to Moscow to Beria.

In 1950, Lavrentiev formulated the principle of thermal insulation of plasma by an electrostatic field "for the purpose of industrial utilization of thermonuclear reactions." The fathers of the Russian hydrogen bomb rejected the idea of an inventor with a seven-year education, however, and proposed to hold the plasma with an electromagnetic field.
In 1950, Sakharov and Tamm carried out calculations and detailed studies and proposed a scheme for a magnetic thermonuclear reactor. Such a device is essentially a hollow donut (or torus), on which a conductor is wound, forming a magnetic field. (Hence its name - a toroidal chamber with a magnetic coil, in abbreviated form - tokamak - became widely known not only among physicists).

In order to heat the plasma in this device to the required temperatures, an electric current is excited using a magnetic field, the strength of which reaches 20 million amperes. It is worth recalling that modern man-made materials deal with a maximum of 6 thousand degrees Celsius (for example, in rocket technology) and after a single use they are only suitable for scrap. At 100 million degrees, any material will evaporate, so a very high magnetic field must keep the plasma in a vacuum inside the “donut”. The field does not allow charged particles to fly out of the “plasma cord” (the plasma is in a tokamak in a compressed and twisted form and looks like a cord), but the neutrons formed during the fusion reaction are not delayed by the magnetic field and transfer their energy to the internal walls of the installation (blanket), which are water cooled. The resulting steam can be sent to a turbine, just like in conventional power plants.

In the early 1950s, Lyman Spitzer, an American astronomer and physicist who worked at the Princeton Laboratory, had similar thoughts on curbing the thermonuclear reaction. He proposed a slightly different way of magnetically confining the plasma in a device called the "stellarator". In it, the plasma is held by magnetic fields created only by external conductors, in contrast to the tokamak, where a significant contribution to the creation of the field configuration is made by the current flowing through the plasma itself.

In 1954, the first tokamak was built at the Institute of Atomic Energy. At first, they did not spare money for the implementation of the idea: the military saw in such a reactor a source of neutrons for enriching nuclear materials and producing tritium. At first, even Sakharov believed that ten to fifteen years remained before the practical production of energy on such installations. The first to understand the ambiguity of prospects using controlled thermonuclear fusion was the military, and when in 1956 academician Igor Kurchatov asked Khrushchev to declassify this topic, they did not object. It was then that we learned about stellarators, and the Americans - about tokamaks.

Yes, the rise of our science in the post-war period was colossal, and when I entered the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University in 1955, I took the advanced laboratory equipment for granted, and when I did an internship in Obninsk at the first nuclear power plant, I generally lived in paradise and mastered in the library and even kept the latest Western magazine and book production, including the most authoritative English and German-language publications on philosophy.

And what was the fate of Oleg Lavrentiev after the execution of his patron Lavrenty Beria in 1953. By the way, Lavrentiev spoke about Beria in Karaulov's TV program "The Moment of Truth" very respectfully ("good man!"). Journalist Valentina Gatash in the article Top-secret physicist Lavrentiev writes:

“Oleg Lavrentiev was born in 1926 in Pskov. Having read the book "Introduction to Nuclear Physics" in the 7th grade, he had a burning dream to work in the field of nuclear energy. But the war began, the occupation, and when the Germans were driven out, Oleg volunteered for the front. The young man met the victory in the Baltic states, but again his studies had to be postponed - he had to continue military service on Sakhalin, in the small town of Poronaysk.

Here he returned to nuclear physics. In the unit there was a library with technical literature and university textbooks, and Oleg, on his sergeant's allowance, subscribed to the journal "Advances in Physical Sciences". The idea of a hydrogen bomb and controlled thermonuclear fusion first came to him in 1948, when the command of the unit, which distinguished a capable sergeant, instructed him to prepare a lecture on the atomic problem.

Having a few free days for preparation, I rethought all the accumulated material and found a solution to issues that I had been struggling with for more than one year, - says Oleg Aleksandrovich. To whom and how to report it? There are no specialists in Sakhalin, which has just been liberated from the Japanese. The soldier writes a letter to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and soon the command of the unit receives an order from Moscow to create working conditions for Lavrentiev. He is given a secure room where he writes his first articles. In July 1950, he sends them by secret mail to the heavy engineering department of the Central Committee.

Sakhalin work consisted of two parts - military and peaceful.

In the first part, Lavrentiev described the principle of operation of a hydrogen bomb, where solid lithium deuteride was used as a fuel. In the second part, he proposed using controlled thermonuclear fusion to generate electricity. The chain reaction of the synthesis of light elements should not proceed in an explosive manner, as in a bomb, but slowly and in a controlled manner. Outstripping both domestic and foreign nuclear scientists, Oleg Lavrentiev decided main question- how to isolate the plasma heated to hundreds of millions of degrees from the walls of the reactor. He proposed at that time a revolutionary solution - to use a force field as a shell for the plasma, in the first version - an electric one.

Oleg did not know that his message was immediately sent for review then to the candidate of sciences, and later to the academician and three times Hero of Socialist Labor A.D. Sakharov, who commented on the idea of controlled thermonuclear fusion: "... I consider it necessary to discuss Comrade Lavrentiev's project in detail. Regardless of the results of the discussion, it is necessary to note the author's creative initiative right now."

In the same 1950, Lavrentiev was demobilized. He comes to Moscow, successfully passes the entrance exams and enters the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University. A few months later, he was summoned by the Minister of Instrumentation V.A. Makhnev - that was the name of the Ministry of Atomic Industry in the realm of secrecy. Accordingly, the Institute of Atomic Energy was called the Laboratory of Measuring Instruments of the USSR Academy of Sciences, that is, LIPAN. At the minister's, Lavrentiev met Sakharov for the first time and found out that Andrei Dmitrievich had read his Sakhalin work, but they only managed to talk a few days later, again at night. It was in the Kremlin, in the office of Lavrenty Beria, who was then a member of the Politburo, chairman of a special committee in charge of the development of atomic and hydrogen weapons in the USSR.

Then I heard a lot of kind words from Andrei Dmitrievich, - Oleg Alexandrovich recalls. - He assured me that now everything will be fine, and offered to work together. Of course, I agreed to the proposal of a man I liked very much.

Lavrentiev did not even suspect that A.D. liked his idea of controlled thermonuclear fusion (CNF) so much. Sakharov that he decided to use it and, together with I.E. Tamm also began to work on the problem of CTS. True, in their version of the reactor, the plasma was held not by an electric, but by a magnetic field. Subsequently, this direction resulted in reactors called "tokamak".

After meetings in "high offices" Lavrentiev's life changed like in a fairy tale. He was given a room in a new house, given an increased scholarship, and the necessary scientific literature was delivered on demand. He took permission to attend classes freely. A teacher of mathematics, then a candidate of sciences, and later an academician, Hero of Socialist Labor A.A. was attached to him. Samara.

In May 1951, Stalin signed a decree of the Council of Ministers that laid the foundation for the State Program for Thermonuclear Research. Oleg received admission to LIPAN, where he gained experience in the field of emerging high-temperature plasma physics and at the same time learned the rules of working under the heading "Soviet secret". In LIPAN, Lavrentiev first learned about the ideas of Sakharov and Tamm on a thermonuclear reactor.

It was a big surprise for me, - Oleg Alexandrovich recalls. - When meeting with me, Andrei Dmitrievich did not say a single word about his work on the magnetic thermal insulation of plasma. Then I decided that we, Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov and I, came to the idea of plasma isolation by a field independently of each other, only I chose an electrostatic thermonuclear reactor as the first option, and he chose a magnetic one.

On August 12, 1953, a thermonuclear charge using lithium deuteride was successfully tested in the USSR. Participants in the creation of new weapons receive state awards, titles and prizes, but Lavrentyev, for a reason completely incomprehensible to him, loses a lot overnight. / MY COMMENT: Everyone knew that L.P., who had been arrested by that time, patronized him. Beria /. In LIPAN, his permit was withdrawn, and he lost his permanent pass to the laboratory. A fifth-year student had to write a graduation project without an internship and without a supervisor on the basis of the theoretical work he had already done on the CTS. Despite this, he successfully defended himself, receiving a diploma with honors. However, the pioneer of this idea was not hired to work at LIPAN, the only place in the USSR where they were then engaged in controlled thermonuclear fusion.

In the spring of 1956, a young specialist with an unusual fate came to our city /Kharkov/ with a report on the theory of electromagnetic traps, which he wanted to show to the director of the institute K.D. Sinelnikov. But Kharkov is not Moscow. The inventor of the TCB was again settled in a hostel, in a room where eleven people lived. Gradually, Oleg made friends and like-minded people, and in 1958 the first electromagnetic trap was built at the KIPT.

At the end of 1973, I sent an application to the State Committee for Inventions and Discoveries for the discovery of "Thermal-insulating effect of the force field," says Lavrentiev. - This was preceded by a long search for my first Sakhalin work on thermonuclear fusion, which was required by the State Committee. When asked, I was then told that the secret archives of the fifties had been destroyed, and I was advised to apply for confirmation of the existence of this work to its first reviewer. Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov sent a certificate confirming the existence of my work and its content. But the State Committee needed that same handwritten Sakhalin letter, which had sunk into oblivion.

But finally, in 2001, in the August issue of the journal "Uspekhi fizicheskikh nauk" a series of articles "On the history of research on controlled thermonuclear fusion" appears. Here, for the first time, the Lavrentiev case is described in detail, a photograph of him from a personal file of half a century ago is placed, and, most importantly, for the first time, the documents found in the Presidential Archives are presented. Russian Federation documents that were stored in a special folder under the heading "Soviet secret". Including Lavrentiev's proposal, sent from Sakhalin on July 29, 1950, and Sakharov's August review of this work, and instructions from L.P. Beria... Nobody destroyed these manuscripts. Scientific priority is restored, the name of Lavrentiev has taken its present place in the history of physics.

The country:

USSR, Russia, Ukraine

Scientific area: Alma mater: Known as:

self-taught, independently put forward the idea of a hydrogen bomb, as well as the author of the first proposal in the USSR and a constructive solution to the problem of controlled thermonuclear fusion, which catalyzed work in this direction.

Awards and prizes

Oleg Alexandrovich Lavrentiev(July 7, Pskov - February 10, Kharkiv) - Soviet, Russian and Ukrainian physicist, Honored Worker of Science and Technology of Ukraine, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences.

Biography

During the war, at the age of 18, he volunteered for the front. Participated in the battles for the liberation of the Baltic States (1944-1945), was awarded the medals "For the victory over Germany" and "30 years of the Soviet Army and Navy". Transferred to the Sakhalin Military District, continued military service in the city of Poronaysk on Sakhalin, which had just been liberated from the Japanese.

Hydrogen bomb and controlled thermonuclear fusion

After meeting with L.P. Beria, Lavrentiev was given a room in a new house and an increased scholarship. He received the right to free attendance at classes and the delivery of scientific literature on demand. Student Lavrentiev's attached teacher of mathematics was Candidate of Sciences A. A. Samarsky (later - Academician and Hero of Socialist Labor).

Priority issues

In August 2001, Lavrentiev's personal file and his proposal, sent from Sakhalin on July 29, 1950, reviewer Sakharov's review and Beria's instructions, which were kept in the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation in a special folder under the heading of secrecy, were published in the journal "Uspekhi fizicheskikh nauk".

It should be noted that the allegations in the media that the first proposal to use LiD as a thermonuclear fuel and even the idea of a hydrogen bomb allegedly belong to Lavrentiev are groundless. Ginzburg's first report on the study of lithium deuteride as a material for a hydrogen bomb is dated December 2, 1948, while the very idea of using LiD as a solid reservoir of deuterium, which arose even earlier, was to a certain extent trivial (and it is not even known which of the developers put it forward) , the main idea was Ginzburg's use of lithium in the form of a rare isotope 6 Li, since the most common isotope 7 Li suppresses a thermonuclear reaction, and 6 Li, on the contrary, in addition to its own energy release during neutron capture, 6 Li (n, t) α, creates in this reactions of tritium, which reacts intensively with deuterium with a much higher energy yield and neutron emission t(d, n)α; thus, no neutrons are lost in this chain. The use of lithium deuteride with an enriched 6 Li isotope was considered in the Ginzburg report of March 3, 1949. The reactions of a proton with 7 Li and a deuteron with 6 Li (with the release of two alpha particles in both cases) proposed in Lavrentiev's note at temperatures achievable in nuclear explosion, do not go because they have too low an effective cross section , as noted in Sakharov's review of Lavrentiev's work (1950).

An outstanding scientist, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Honored Worker of Science and Technology of Ukraine, Honorary Citizen of the city of Pskov.

Little is known about his parents. Natives of the peasants of the Pskov province. Father Alexander Nikolayevich, who graduated from two classes of the parish school, worked as a clerk at the Vdvizhenets factory, mother Alexandra Fedorovna graduated from four classes of the parochial school and worked as a nurse in a mother and child home. The family lived in Pogankin lane (now Museum) in an old red brick house. The future scientist studied at the second exemplary school (modern Technical Lyceum).

In his memoirs, Oleg Aleksandrovich said that in 1941, as a seventh grader, he read the book "Introduction to Nuclear Physics", which made a very strong impression on him. “So for the first time I learned about the nuclear problem, and my blue dream was born - to work in the field of nuclear energy.”

The Great Patriotic War began and Pskov was occupied by German troops on July 9, 1941. In the first days of the occupation, a friend of Oleg Lavrentyev, fifteen-year-old Volodya Gusarov, was executed. Immediately after the liberation of Pskov in 1944, having barely reached the age of 18, Lavrentiev volunteered for the front.

He had a chance to participate in the battles for the liberation of the Baltic States, and after the end of the war, Lavrentiev continued to serve as a radio telegraph operator of the anti-aircraft artillery battalion on Sakhalin in the city of Poronaysk.

Among his awards are medals "For the victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic war 1941-1945" and "30 years Soviet army and Fleet.

The young sergeant ordered books and magazines on physics from Moscow, among his orders was the scientific journal of the USSR Academy of Sciences “Progress in Physical Sciences, addressed to scientists, graduate students and teachers of physics. The garrison had a library with a good selection of technical literature and textbooks.

As a result, Oleg Lavrentiev independently gained knowledge in mathematics and physics at the level of a university program.

In 1948, the command of the unit, which distinguished the capable sergeant, instructed him to prepare a lecture on the atomic problem. It was then, in the process of preparation, that the twenty-four-year-old Lavrentiev proposed the original design of the hydrogen bomb.

In July 1950, Oleg Lavrentiev sent his first articles by secret mail to the heavy engineering department of the Central Committee. For the first time in the world, he formulates the problem of using controlled thermonuclear fusion for peaceful energy and proposes the design of the first reactor. Much later it became known that his work was sent for review to the then Candidate of Sciences, and later Academician and three times Hero of Socialist Labor Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov.

In 1950, Lavrentiev passed the entrance exams and entered the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University.

Some time later, the Minister of Instrumentation (this was how the Ministry of Atomic Industry was disguised, the Institute of Atomic Energy was called the Laboratory of Measuring Instruments of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR) organized a meeting between student Lavrentiev and Andrei Sakharov. He confirmed the scientific value of the ideas of controlled thermonuclear fusion of the former sergeant and special conditions for training and work were created for him.

He was assigned a mathematics teacher, then a candidate of sciences, and later an academician, Hero of Socialist Labor Alexander Andreevich Samarsky, provided a room and a scholarship.

After graduating from the university, the young scientist is sent to the Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology. Further life becomes secret.

It was only in the 2000s that it became known that Oleg Lavrentiev, Ph.D., a leading researcher, has been living and working in Pyatikhatki, the settlement of employees of the Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology, for more than half a century.

In 2001, the journal "Uspekhi fizicheskikh nauk" published a series of articles "On the history of research on controlled thermonuclear fusion", which described Oleg Alexandrovich Lavrentiev and his work.

On the basis of declassified materials from the archive of the President of the Russian Federation, Lavrentiev is officially recognized as the author of the idea of thermonuclear fusion and the hydrogen bomb. Academicians Igor Evgenievich Tamm and Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov, other prominent scientists documented that Lavrentiev put forward his ideas before any publications on this problem.

Lavrentiev Oleg Aleksandrovich - a world-famous scientist, author of 114 scientific papers, his name has taken its proper place in the history of physics

In 2007, the scientist was awarded a diploma from the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Alexy II as a blessing for sacrificial service to the Fatherland and a significant contribution to the creation of a nuclear weapons complex.

In July 2010, Lavrentiev was awarded the title of "Honorary Citizen of the City of Pskov". Oleg Alexandrovich died in Kharkov on February 10, 2011.

Father of the H-bomb

Lavrentiev was assigned a guarded room at the division headquarters and given the opportunity to write his first work on thermonuclear fusion.

The work consisted of two parts. The first part included a description of the principle of operation of a hydrogen bomb with lithium-6 deuteride as the main explosive and a uranium detonator. It was a barrel structure with two subcritical hemispheres of uranium-235, which were fired towards each other. With a symmetrical arrangement of charges, Oleg wanted to double the speed of the collision of the critical mass in order to avoid premature expansion of the substance before the explosion. The uranium detonator was surrounded by a layer of lithium-6 deuteride. Oleg performed an assessment of the explosion power, proposed a method for the separation of lithium isotopes and an experimental program for the project.

In the second part of the work, he proposed a device for using the energy of thermonuclear reactions between light elements for peaceful purposes - the very idea of controlled thermonuclear fusion, which has been worked on for more than 50 years all over the world.

Lavrentiev, of course, was rushed, and he himself was in a hurry to finish the work faster, since they had already sent the documents to the admissions committee of Moscow State University, and received a notification that they had been accepted.

On July 21, an order came for his early demobilization - a soldier who corresponds with the Central Committee, and even by secret mail - this is a big hassle for any boss, it is very useful to get rid of such soldiers as soon as possible. Oleg had to wrap up, although the second part of his work was not yet finished. The work was printed in one copy and on July 22, 1950 was sent by secret mail to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks addressed to the head of the department of heavy engineering I.D. Serbina. The drafts were destroyed, about which an act was drawn up signed by the military clerk of the secret office, foreman Alekseev and the author himself. It was sad for Oleg to watch how the sheets of his first outstanding scientific work in which he has invested two weeks of hard work and several years of thought. Already in the evening, with demobilization documents, the junior sergeant left for Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, and there he learned unpleasant news. It turns out that near Vladivostok, railway tracks were washed out by rain, and more than 10 thousand passengers accumulated at the station. There was only a week left before the entrance exams!

Oleg turned to the Sakhalin regional party committee for help and the secretaries for science and industry helped him buy a plane ticket to Khabarovsk to jump over the traffic jam in Vladivostok, and while he was waiting for his flight, they advised him to read G. Smith's report, which they had in the obkom library . How annoyed Oleg was that he had not come across this book before. In it, he found a detailed description of the work on the American atomic project and answers to many questions that he had to think of himself.

Oleg arrived in Moscow on August 8, the entrance exams were not over yet, and he was included in the group of latecomers.

On August 2, 1950, Beria, sitting at a table in his office, removed a document of three dozen stapled pages from a pile of papers brought to him by the secretary, began to read them and remembered, smiling, that he had ordered Serbin to get this work from Sakhalin a couple of months ago. He casually began flipping through the pages, believing that he would run this work “diagonally” and give it to someone to answer this enthusiastic soldier, but it turned out differently. As soon as Beria understood what exactly Lavrentiev had proposed, this work completely captured him, and Beria began to read Oleg's work from the first page and with a pencil in his hand. Half an hour later he got up, went to the bookcases, quickly found and took out B.V. Nekrasov, opened it on the table of contents, looked through it, mechanically whispering: “Hydrides, hydrides,” opened it on the right page, read it, shaking his head in surprise, and then picked up the phone.

- Connect me with Kurchatov.

An hour and a half later, Beria asked Kurchatov a question.

- And if we use solid lithium deuteride instead of a mixture of liquid deuterium and tritium in a hydrogen bomb?

- Lithium deuteride? Kurchatov was surprised at the question. - And what will it give?

– Lithium deuteride is not a gas, it is a solid with a melting point of 700°. I checked on Nekrasov. This means that the bomb will not need cryostats, which means that it can be made light! The scheme is simple - an atomic bomb, and around it a layer of lithium deuteride.

“Yes, but lithium will trap neutrons,” Kurchatov was taken aback by such a simple solution to the problem.

- Vice versa! We need not just lithium, but lithium-6! That's the trick! Then, when a neutron is absorbed, it will give helium and tritium! And tritium, combining with deuterium, will give helium and a neutron! This chain of reactions closes in neutrons! - With these words, Beria conveyed Lavrentiev's proposal to Kurchatov. - Look what this soldier, or rather, junior sergeant, writes.

Kurchatov began to quickly look through the document.

- Hell! But this can be a solution to the issue ... But a lot has been written here, it needs to be considered.

- Give the conclusion to the specialists, and send this conclusion to me urgently! This puff hydrogen bomb is something very simple and therefore very convincing! Yes, one more thing: all this must be kept in the strictest secrecy, - Beria thought a little. “If this proposal goes through, then even this soldier will not be informed yet that his proposal has been accepted. He is now entering the university, a young business, he can casually boast somewhere. He should be told that he is a great fellow, but that we are creating a hydrogen bomb in a different way. Promise that we will involve him in this work when he graduates, but that now you need to keep your mouth shut. We will mark it and so we will mark it, but for now let it remain in the dark for the time being. For the good of the cause, - summed up Beria.

August 19, 1950 Beria read two pages of the document in his office, after which he picked up the receiver and connected with the secretary.

- Write down: Lavrentiev O.A. He was supposed to enter Moscow University this year. Find out in the personnel department of Moscow State University whether he entered or not. And connect me with Kurchatov.

It hadn't even been five minutes since he was on the phone.

- Hello, Igor Vasilyevich! I read the conclusion on a question known to you by a certain Sakharov ... The conclusion is sensible and enthusiastic. So, we have a breakthrough in this matter? So, we are starting to develop Lavrentiev's puff? .. Yes, I will also spit over my shoulder so as not to jinx it.

Five minutes later the secretary entered.

– Oleg Alexandrovich Lavrentiev was enrolled in the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University.

- If this Lomonosov had not entered the Moscow State University, it would have been necessary to close the Moscow State University.

- Which Lomonosov? The secretary didn't understand.

- It's me - not you.

In September, when Oleg Lavrentiev was already a student, he met with Serbin. Oleg expected to receive a review of his work, but the meeting upset him. True, Serbin greeted me very cordially, asked me to tell in detail about all Oleg's proposals for a hydrogen bomb. He listened attentively, did not ask questions, and at the end of the conversation he said that another method of creating a hydrogen bomb was known, on which our scientists are working today. Nevertheless, he invited Oleg to keep in touch and inform him of any ideas that Oleg would have.

Then he seated Lavrentiev in a separate room and Oleg filled out a questionnaire for about half an hour and wrote an autobiography, signed a non-disclosure agreement. Oleg subsequently had to repeat this procedure several times.

A month later, Lavrentiev wrote another work - on thermonuclear fusion - and sent it to Serbin through the expedition of the Central Committee. But the response again did not receive, neither positive nor negative.

Beria received Lavrentiev's work on thermonuclear controlled fusion on October 2, 1950, read it carefully with a red pencil in his hands, imposed a resolution and picked up the telephone receiver.

- Connect me with Makhnev ...

V.A. Makhnev was the minister of the nuclear industry. This ministry at that time had the code name "Ministry of Measuring Instrumentation" and was located in the Kremlin next to the building of the Council of Ministers.

“Vasily Alekseevich,” Beria said, connecting with Makhnev, “I received from student Lavrentiev a new and, it seems, also a very interesting proposal on a magnetic thermonuclear reactor, I will send this proposal to Pavlov and Alexandrov. I want to get acquainted with this Lavrentiev, by the way, and with this young physicist Sakharov... No, I'm unlikely to be able to in the near future, but you keep this meeting under control - remind me.

At this time, the financial situation of Oleg Lavrentiev was rapidly deteriorating and inevitably approaching collapse. In the first semester, he did not receive a scholarship, and his meager military savings ran out, while his mother, who worked as a nurse in Vladimir, could practically not help him. And at that time it was necessary to pay for studying at the university, and although the fee was not high - 400 rubles a year - the monthly salary of a cleaning lady, nevertheless, Oleg could not collect this money either. And the dean of the Faculty of Physics, Sokolov, decided to expel the defaulter from the university by submitting the relevant documents to the personnel department.

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From Albert Einstein author Ivanov Sergey Mikhailovich

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Oleg Lavrentiev was born in 1926 in Pskov. Having read the book "Introduction to Nuclear Physics" in the 7th grade, he had a burning dream to work in the field of nuclear energy. But the war began, the occupation, and when the Germans were driven out, Oleg volunteered for the front. The young man met the victory in the Baltic states, but again his studies had to be postponed - he had to continue military service on Sakhalin, in the small town of Poronaysk.

Sakhalin work consisted of two parts - military and peaceful.

In the first part, Lavrentiev described the principle of operation of a hydrogen bomb, where solid lithium deuteride was used as a fuel. In the second part, he proposed using controlled thermonuclear fusion to generate electricity. The chain reaction of the synthesis of light elements should not proceed in an explosive manner, as in a bomb, but slowly and in a controlled manner. Outstripping both domestic and foreign nuclear scientists, Oleg Lavrentiev solved the main question - how to isolate the plasma heated to hundreds of millions of degrees from the reactor walls. He proposed at that time a revolutionary solution - to use a force field as a shell for the plasma, in the first version - an electric one.

In the same 1950, Lavrentiev was demobilized. He comes to Moscow, successfully passes the entrance exams and enters the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University. A few months later, he was summoned by the Minister of Instrumentation V.A. Makhnev - that was the name of the Ministry of Atomic Industry in the realm of secrecy, respectively, the Institute of Atomic Energy was called the Laboratory of Measuring Instruments of the USSR Academy of Sciences, that is, LIPAN. At the minister's, Lavrentiev met Sakharov for the first time and found out that Andrei Dmitrievich had read his Sakhalin work, but they only managed to talk a few days later, again at night. It was in the Kremlin, in the office of Lavrenty Beria, who was then a member of the Politburo, chairman of a special committee in charge of the development of atomic and hydrogen weapons in the USSR.

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On August 12, 1953, a thermonuclear charge using lithium deuteride was successfully tested in the USSR. Participants in the creation of new weapons receive state awards, titles and prizes, but Lavrentyev, for a reason completely incomprehensible to him, loses a lot overnight. In LIPAN, his permit was withdrawn, and he lost his permanent pass to the laboratory. A fifth-year student had to write a graduation project without an internship and without a supervisor on the basis of the theoretical work he had already done on the CTS. Despite this, he successfully defended himself, receiving a diploma with honors. However, the pioneer of this idea was not hired to work at LIPAN, the only place in the USSR where they were then engaged in controlled thermonuclear fusion.

In the spring of 1956, a young specialist with an unusual fate came to our city with a report on the theory of electromagnetic traps, which he wanted to show to the director of the institute, K.D. Sinelnikov. But Kharkov is not Moscow. The inventor of the TCB was again settled in a hostel, in a room where eleven people lived. Gradually, Oleg made friends and like-minded people, and in 1958 the first electromagnetic trap was built at the KIPT.

But finally, in 2001, in the August issue of the journal "Uspekhi fizicheskikh nauk" a series of articles "On the history of research on controlled thermonuclear fusion" appears. Here, for the first time, the Lavrentiev case is described in detail, a photograph of him from a personal file of half a century ago is placed, and, most importantly, for the first time documents found in the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, which were stored in a special folder under the heading "Soviet secret", are presented. Including Lavrentiev's proposal, sent from Sakhalin on July 29, 1950, and Sakharov's August review of this work, and instructions from L.P. Beria... Nobody destroyed these manuscripts. Scientific priority is restored, the name of Lavrentiev has taken its present place in the history of physics.