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BIOGRAPHIES OF GREAT SCIENTISTS
Kurchatov Igor Vasilievich Biography of a scientist
Directory / Biographies of great scientists
Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov was born on December 30, 1902 (January 12, 1903) in the family of an assistant forester in Bashkiria. In 1909 the family moved to Simbirsk. In 1912, the Kurchatovs moved to Simferopol. Here the boy enters the first grade of the gymnasium. Igor is fond of football, French wrestling, woodcutting, and reads a lot. He fell into the hands of Corbino's book "Advances in Modern Technology", which further strengthened his craving for technology. Igor began to collect technical literature. Dreaming of becoming an engineer, he, along with his classmates, studies analytic geometry in the scope of a university course, solving numerous mathematical problems. But with each year of the First World War, the financial situation of the family became more and more difficult. I had to help my father. Igor worked in the garden and, together with his father, went to the cannery to cut firewood. In the evenings he worked in the mouthpiece workshop. Soon, Igor enters an evening craft school in Simferopol, receives the qualification of a locksmith. Later it came in handy: he worked as a mechanic at Thyssen's small mechanical factory. In the last grades of the gymnasium, despite the need to earn a living, Igor manages to read a lot of fiction by Russian and foreign authors. The surviving certificates testify to Igor's successes in the gymnasium. Over the past two years, Igor Kurchatov's only score was a five. In 1920 he graduated from the gymnasium with a gold medal. In September of the same year, he entered the first year of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Crimean University. Here he studied so well that in 1923 he completed a four-year course in three years and brilliantly defended his thesis. The young graduate was sent as a teacher of physics at the Baku Polytechnic Institute, but he decided to study on his own. Six months later, Kurchatov left for Petrograd and immediately entered the third year of the shipbuilding department of the Polytechnic Institute. Here he begins to do research. In the spring of 1925, when classes at the Polytechnic Institute were over, Kurchatov left for Leningrad to the Institute of Physics and Technology in the laboratory of the famous physicist Ioffe. The mighty talent of the experimental physicist Kurchatov flourished on this fertile soil. Already with his first works, Igor Vasilievich won scientific authority at the institute and soon became one of the leading employees. Adopted in 1925 as an assistant, he received the title of researcher of the first category, then senior engineer-physicist. Along with research work, Kurchatov taught a special course in the physics of dielectrics at the Faculty of Physics and Mechanics of the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute and at the Pedagogical Institute. A brilliant lecturer, he mastered the art of conveying the physical meaning of the phenomena described and was greatly loved by young people. He often talked about the results of his research, aroused young people's interest in science. Appreciating his students, Abram Fedorovich Ioffe never restricted their freedom. When Igor Vasilyevich started working at the Phystech, he was 22 years old, and the institute was "seven years old, and the youth of the staff was a common thing," Ioffe wrote. Teasingly, the institute was called a "kindergarten". Kurchatov came to the liking of the team with his youth, enthusiasm, his ability to work, his desire and desire to live by common interests. The first printed work in the laboratory of dielectrics was a study of the passage of slow electrons through thin metal films. Already during the solution of this first problem, one of the typical features of Igor Vasil'evich manifested itself - to notice contradictions and anomalies and to clarify them by direct experiments. “The same property,” Ioffe believes, “led him to the discovery of ferroelectricity, to the search for a mechanism for rectifying the current, to the study of the nonlinearity of currents in carborundum arresters, to the study of pre-breakdown currents in glasses and resins, the unipolarity of currents in salts, and later to discoveries in the field atomic nucleus... Igor Vasil'evich's talent was especially evident in the discovery of ferroelectricity. Some anomalies in the dielectric properties of Rochelle salt had been described before him. In them, Kurchatov intuitively suspected the manifestation of some unknown properties in the behavior of dielectrics. Together with Kobeko, he discovered that these properties are similar to the magnetic properties of ferromagnets, and he called such dielectrics ferroelectrics. This name was adopted by Soviet researchers; abroad, the phenomenon of ferroelectricity is called ferroelectricity, which further emphasizes the analogy with ferromagnetism. Kurchatov's experiments were carried out exceptionally clearly. Their results, presented by a system of curves depicting the dependence of the effect on the strength of the field and on temperature, demonstrated the discovery with such persuasiveness that almost no explanation was required for them. "Kurchatov investigated the dependence of the effect on the crystallographic direction, on the duration of exposure to an electric field, and on the history. The Curie points were established and the lower Curie point was discovered, the spontaneous orientation of the crystal and the properties of Rochelle salt beyond the Curie points. Kurchatov and his collaborators moved from pure Rochelle salt to solid solutions and complex compounds with ferroelectric properties. In addition to Kobeko, Igor Vasilyevich's brother, Boris Vasilyevich Kurchatov, also participated in these studies," Ioffe wrote. Thus, Kurchatov and his collaborators created a new direction in physics. In 1927, Igor Vasilyevich marries Marina Dmitrievna Sinelnikova, the sister of his friend Kirill. He met her back in the Crimea and was friends all these years. She becomes his faithful friend and assistant. They did not have children, and Marina Dmitrievna gave all her attention to Igor Vasilyevich, completely freeing him from the little things in life. She created that atmosphere of friendliness that everyone who crossed the threshold of their house felt. Kurchatov worked at home as intensively as at the institute. His conversations were full, the meals were short, and the guest invited to the table suddenly noticed that he was left alone with the friendly hostess of the house, and Igor Vasilyevich managed to quietly leave and was already working in his office. In 1930, Kurchatov was appointed head of the Physics Department of the Leningrad Institute of Physics and Technology. And at this time, he abruptly changes the scope of his interests, starting to study atomic physics. At that time, few people imagined how important these studies would be for the defense of the country. The work of Kurchatov and his staff was not slow to bear fruit. Starting to study artificial radioactivity that occurs when nuclei are irradiated with neutrons, or, as they called it then, to study the Fermi effect, already in April 1935, Igor Vasilyevich reported on a new phenomenon discovered by him, together with his brother Boris and L. I. Rusinov - isomerism of artificial atomic nuclei. Nuclear isomerism was discovered in the study of the artificial radioactivity of bromine. Further studies have shown that many atomic nuclei are capable of assuming various isomeric states. In December 1936, Weizsacker's theoretical work, important for understanding the nature of the isomerism of atomic nuclei, appeared. In this work, it was assumed that isomeric nuclei with the same charges and mass numbers differ in that they are in different energy states - in the ground and in the excited state. This assumption required experimental verification. Experiments were carried out in Kurchatov's laboratory, which showed with complete clarity that isomerism is indeed due to the presence of metastable excited states of atomic nuclei. After this, research on nuclear isomers began to develop intensively in many laboratories in different countries. The study of nuclear isomers largely determined the development of ideas about the structure of the atomic nucleus. Simultaneously with the study of the isomerism discovered by him, Kurchatov conducts other experiments with neutrons. Together with L. A. Artsimovich, he conducts a series of studies on the absorption of slow neutrons, and they achieve fundamental results. They manage to observe the capture of a neutron by a proton with the formation of a heavy hydrogen nucleus - a deuteron, and reliably measure the cross section of this reaction. Kurchatov is looking for an answer to the main question: does neutron multiplication occur in various compositions of uranium and moderator. Kurchatov entrusted this delicate experimental task to his young collaborators Flerov and Petrzhak, and they performed it brilliantly. At the beginning of 1940, Flerov and Petrzhak submitted a brief report on a new phenomenon they had discovered - spontaneous fission of uranium - to the American journal Physical Review, which published most of the reports on uranium. The letter was published, but week after week passed, and there was still no response. The Americans classified all their work on the atomic nucleus. The world entered the Second World War. The program of scientific work outlined by Kurchatov was interrupted, and instead of nuclear physics, he began to develop systems for the demagnetization of warships. The installation created by his employees made it possible to protect warships from German magnetic mines. Only in 1943, when the future academician G. Flerov wrote a letter to Stalin himself, were research on atomic energy resumed. In the same year, Igor Vasilievich headed the Soviet atomic project. Scientific work on the creation of atomic weapons expanded rapidly. The year 1945 was marked by the launch of the cyclotron, miraculously built in just a year. Soon the first stream of fast protons was received. Kurchatov gathers the participants of his launch at his home and raises a glass to the first victory of the new team. The institute's plans are expanding, its forces are growing rapidly. New buildings are being designed for the largest cyclotron, and for experiments on building a uranium-graphite pile, isotope separation, and other research. Before the war, Kurchatov's talent as an experimenter flourished, during this period he appears as an organizer of science on a large scale, unprecedented in pre-war times. Kurchatov is full of inexhaustible energy. The surrounding people are exhausted from the "Kurchatov" pace of work, but he does not show signs of fatigue. Possessing a rare charm, he quickly makes friends among the leaders of industry and the army. Kurchatov, having found himself in a new environment for industry leaders, did not cease to be an experimental physicist. All areas of research are being developed in various institutes of the country, but Kurchatov solves the most important, key issues himself. He himself builds a uranium-graphite boiler: in his Laboratory No. 2, together with his brother Boris, he receives the first weight portions of plutonium, and here he develops methods for the diffusion and electromagnetic separation of uranium isotopes. The test was scheduled for dawn on August 29, 1949. The physicists who made the bomb breathed a sigh of relief when they saw a blinding light brighter than on the brightest sunny day, and a mushroom cloud extending into the stratosphere. They fulfilled their obligations. Almost four years later, on the morning of August 12, 1953, even before sunrise, a crushing thermonuclear explosion was heard over the test site. The world's first hydrogen bomb has now been successfully tested. It turned out that not only the US nuclear monopoly was broken, but the myth of the superiority of American science was dispelled. The mind of Soviet scientists, the hands of Soviet workers created the world's first hydrogen bomb. The weapon has been made, but, according to Igor Vasilievich, atomic energy should serve man. Back in 1949, Kurchatov began working on a nuclear power plant project. The nuclear power plant is a messenger of the peaceful use of atomic energy. The design and construction of it were transferred to the institute, which was headed by D. I. Blokhintsev in Obninsk near Moscow. Kurchatov constantly monitored the construction, checked, helped. The project has been successfully completed. On July 27, 1954, our nuclear power plant became the first in the world! Kurchatov rejoiced and had fun like a child. Kurchatov's speech at an international conference in England was sensational, where he spoke about the Soviet program for the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Now the scientist faces a new task - the creation of a power plant based on a thermonuclear controlled reaction. But Kurchatov did not have time to carry out this plan. Although the Ogra thermonuclear plant was built according to his project, it became only a distant prototype of the energy machines of the future. It was, first of all, the famous "TOKAMAK" - a toroidal thermonuclear magnetohydrodynamic reactor, built under the leadership of Academician L. Artsimovich. On February 7, 1960, after meeting with Academicians P. Kapitsa and A. Topchiev, Kurchatov went to the Barvikha sanatorium near Moscow, where Academician Yu. Khariton was staying. They walked for a long time in the garden, and then sat down on a bench. There was a sudden pause in the conversation. Khariton turned around and saw that Kurchatov had died. Thus ended the life of this great scientist and organizer of science. Author: Samin D.K.
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