1.6.7. How Tsai Lun invented paper For several thousand years, the Chinese considered all other countries barbaric. China is home to many great inventions. Paper was invented right here. Before its appearance, in China they used scrolls for notes.

On August 12, 1953, at 7.30 am, the first Soviet hydrogen bomb was tested at the Semipalatinsk test site, which had the service name “Product RDS-6c”. This was the fourth Soviet nuclear weapons test.

The beginning of the first work on the thermonuclear program in the USSR dates back to 1945. Then information was received about research being carried out in the United States on the thermonuclear problem. They were started on the initiative of the American physicist Edward Teller in 1942. The basis was taken by Teller’s concept of thermonuclear weapons, which in the circles of Soviet nuclear scientists was called a “pipe” - a cylindrical container with liquid deuterium, which was supposed to be heated by the explosion of an initiating device such as a conventional atomic bomb. Only in 1950 did the Americans establish that the “pipe” was futile, and they continued to develop other designs. But by this time, Soviet physicists had already independently developed another concept of thermonuclear weapons, which soon - in 1953 - led to success.

Alternative scheme hydrogen bomb invented by Andrei Sakharov. The bomb was based on the idea of ​​a “puff” and the use of lithium-6 deuteride. Developed at KB-11 (today the city of Sarov, former Arzamas-16, Nizhny Novgorod region), the RDS-6s thermonuclear charge was a spherical system of layers of uranium and thermonuclear fuel, surrounded by a chemical explosive.

To increase the energy release of the charge, tritium was used in its design. The main task in creating such a weapon was to use the energy released during the explosion of an atomic bomb to heat and ignite heavy hydrogen - deuterium, to carry out thermonuclear reactions with the release of energy that can support themselves. To increase the proportion of “burnt” deuterium, Sakharov proposed surrounding the deuterium with a shell of ordinary natural uranium, which was supposed to slow down the expansion and, most importantly, significantly increase the density of deuterium. The phenomenon of ionization compression of thermonuclear fuel, which became the basis of the first Soviet hydrogen bomb, is still called “saccharization.”

Based on the results of work on the first hydrogen bomb, Andrei Sakharov received the title of Hero of Socialist Labor and laureate of the Stalin Prize.

“Product RDS-6s” was made in the form of a transportable bomb weighing 7 tons, which was placed in the bomb hatch of a Tu-16 bomber. For comparison, the bomb created by the Americans weighed 54 tons and was the size of a three-story house.

To assess the destructive impacts new bomb, a city of industrial and administrative buildings was built at the Semipalatinsk test site. In total, there were 190 different structures on the field. In this test, vacuum intakes of radiochemical samples were used for the first time, which automatically opened under the influence of shock wave. In total, 500 different measuring, recording and filming devices installed in underground casemates and durable ground structures were prepared for testing the RDS-6s. Aviation technical support for testing - measuring the pressure of the shock wave on an aircraft in the air at the time of the explosion of the product, taking air samples from radioactive cloud, aerial photography of the area was carried out by a special flight unit. The bomb was detonated remotely by sending a signal from a remote control located in the bunker.

It was decided to carry out an explosion on a steel tower 40 meters high, the charge was located at a height of 30 meters. The radioactive soil from previous tests was removed to a safe distance, special structures were built in their own places on old foundations, and a bunker was built 5 meters from the tower to install equipment developed at the Institute of Chemical Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences that recorded thermonuclear processes.

Installed on the field military equipment all branches of the military. During the tests, all experimental structures within a radius of up to four kilometers were destroyed. A hydrogen bomb explosion could completely destroy a city 8 kilometers across. Environmental consequences The explosions turned out to be terrifying: the first explosion accounted for 82% strontium-90 and 75% cesium-137.

The power of the bomb reached 400 kilotons, 20 times more than the first atomic bombs in the USA and USSR.

The work to create the hydrogen bomb became the world's first intellectual "battle of wits" on a truly global scale. The creation of the hydrogen bomb initiated the emergence of completely new scientific directions— physics of high-temperature plasma, physics of ultra-high energy densities, physics of anomalous pressures. For the first time in human history, mathematical modeling was used on a large scale.

Work on the “RDS-6s product” created a scientific and technical basis, which was then used in the development of an incomparably more advanced hydrogen bomb of a fundamentally new type - a two-stage hydrogen bomb.

The hydrogen bomb of Sakharov’s design not only became a serious counter-argument in the political confrontation between the USA and the USSR, but also served as the reason for the rapid development of Soviet cosmonautics in those years. It was after successful nuclear tests OKB Korolev received an important government task to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile to deliver the created charge to the target. Subsequently, the rocket, called the “seven”, launched the first artificial Earth satellite into space, and it was on it that the first cosmonaut of the planet, Yuri Gagarin, launched.

The material was prepared based on information from open sources

7 countries with nuclear weapons form the nuclear club. Each of these states spent millions to create their own atomic bomb. Development has been going on for years. But without the gifted physicists who were tasked with conducting research in this area, nothing would have happened. About these people in today's Diletant selection. media.

Robert Oppenheimer

The parents of the man under whose leadership the world's first atomic bomb was created had nothing to do with science. Oppenheimer's father was involved in the textile trade, his mother was an artist. Robert graduated from Harvard early, took a course in thermodynamics and became interested in experimental physics.


After several years of work in Europe, Oppenheimer moved to California, where he lectured for two decades. When the Germans discovered uranium fission in the late 1930s, the scientist began to think about the problem of nuclear weapons. Since 1939, he actively participated in the creation of the atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Project and directed the laboratory at Los Alamos.

There, on July 16, 1945, Oppenheimer’s “brainchild” was tested for the first time. “I have become death, the destroyer of worlds,” said the physicist after the tests.

A few months later, atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Oppenheimer has since insisted on the use of atomic energy exclusively for peaceful purposes. Having become a defendant in a criminal case due to his unreliability, the scientist was removed from secret developments. He died in 1967 from laryngeal cancer.

Igor Kurchatov

The USSR acquired its own atomic bomb four years later than the Americans. It could not have happened without the help of intelligence officers, but the merits of the scientists who worked in Moscow should not be underestimated. Atomic research was led by Igor Kurchatov. His childhood and youth were spent in Crimea, where he first learned to be a mechanic. Then he graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Taurida University and continued to study in Petrograd. There he entered the laboratory of the famous Abram Ioffe.

Kurchatov headed the Soviet atomic project when he was only 40 years old. Years of painstaking work involving leading specialists have brought long-awaited results. The first in our country nuclear weapon under the name RDS-1, it was tested at the test site in Semipalatinsk on August 29, 1949.

The experience accumulated by Kurchatov and his team allowed the Soviet Union to subsequently launch the world's first industrial nuclear power plant, and atomic reactor for a submarine and an icebreaker, which no one had achieved before.

Andrey Sakharov

The hydrogen bomb appeared first in the United States. But the American model was the size of a three-story house and weighed more than 50 tons. Meanwhile, the RDS-6s product, created by Andrei Sakharov, weighed only 7 tons and could fit on a bomber.

During the war, Sakharov, while evacuated, graduated with honors from Moscow State University. He worked as an engineer-inventor at a military plant, then entered graduate school at the Lebedev Physical Institute. Under the leadership of Igor Tamm, he worked in a research group for the development of thermonuclear weapons. Sakharov came up with the basic principle of the Soviet hydrogen bomb - the puff pastry.

The first Soviet hydrogen bomb was tested in 1953

The first Soviet hydrogen bomb was tested near Semipalatinsk in 1953. To evaluate its destructive capabilities, a city of industrial and administrative buildings was built at the test site.

Since the late 1950s, Sakharov devoted a lot of time to human rights activities. He condemned the arms race, criticized the communist government, spoke out for the abolition of the death penalty and against forced psychiatric treatment dissidents. Opposed the introduction Soviet troops to Afghanistan. Andrei Sakharov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and in 1980 he was exiled to Gorky for his beliefs, where he repeatedly went on hunger strikes and from where he was able to return to Moscow only in 1986.

Bertrand Goldschmidt

The ideologist of the French nuclear program was Charles de Gaulle, and the creator of the first bomb was Bertrand Goldschmidt. Before the start of the war, the future specialist studied chemistry and physics and joined Marie Curie. The German occupation and the Vichy government's attitude towards Jews forced Goldschmidt to stop his studies and emigrate to the United States, where he collaborated first with American and then with Canadian colleagues.


In 1945, Goldschmidt became one of the founders of the French Atomic Energy Commission. The first test of the bomb created under his leadership occurred only 15 years later - in the southwest of Algeria.

Qian Sanqiang

China joined the club nuclear powers only in October 1964. Then the Chinese tested their own atomic bomb with a yield of more than 20 kilotons. Mao Zedong decided to develop this industry after his first trip to Soviet Union. In 1949, Stalin showed the great helmsman the capabilities of nuclear weapons.

The Chinese nuclear project was led by Qian Sanqiang. A graduate of the physics department of Tsinghua University, he went to study in France at public expense. He worked at the Radium Institute of the University of Paris. Qian communicated a lot with foreign scientists and carried out quite serious research, but he became homesick and returned to China, taking several grams of radium as a gift from Irene Curie.

Over the course of two years, Heisenberg's group carried out the research necessary to create a nuclear reactor using uranium and heavy water. It was confirmed that only one of the isotopes can serve as an explosive, namely uranium-235, contained in very small concentrations in ordinary uranium ore. The first problem was how to isolate it from there. The starting point of the bomb program was a nuclear reactor, which required graphite or heavy water as a reaction moderator. German physicists chose water, thereby creating for themselves serious problem. After the occupation of Norway, the world's only heavy water production plant at that time passed into the hands of the Nazis. But there, at the beginning of the war, the supply of the product needed by physicists was only tens of kilograms, and even they did not go to the Germans - the French stole valuable products literally from under the noses of the Nazis. And in February 1943, British commandos sent to Norway, with the help of local resistance fighters, put the plant out of commission. The implementation of Germany's nuclear program was under threat. The misfortunes of the Germans did not end there: an experimental nuclear reactor exploded in Leipzig. The uranium project was supported by Hitler only as long as there was hope of obtaining super-powerful weapons before the end of the war he started. Heisenberg was invited by Speer and asked directly: “When can we expect the creation of a bomb capable of being suspended from a bomber?” The scientist was honest: “I believe it will take several years of hard work, in any case, the bomb will not be able to influence the outcome of the current war.” The German leadership rationally considered that there was no point in forcing events. Let the scientists work calmly - you'll see they'll be in time for the next war. As a result, Hitler decided to concentrate scientific, production and financial resources only on projects that would provide the fastest return in the creation of new types of weapons. Government funding for the uranium project was curtailed. Nevertheless, the scientists’ work continued.

Manfred von Ardenne, who developed a method for gas diffusion purification and separation of uranium isotopes in a centrifuge.

In 1944, Heisenberg received cast uranium plates for a large reactor plant, for which a special bunker was already being built in Berlin. The last experiment to achieve a chain reaction was scheduled for January 1945, but on January 31 all the equipment was hastily dismantled and sent from Berlin to the village of Haigerloch near the Swiss border, where it was deployed only at the end of February. The reactor contained 664 cubes of uranium with a total weight of 1525 kg, surrounded by a graphite moderator-neutron reflector weighing 10 tons. In March 1945, an additional 1.5 tons of heavy water was poured into the core. On March 23, Berlin was reported that the reactor was operational. But the joy was premature - the reactor did not reach the critical point, the chain reaction did not start. After recalculations, it turned out that the amount of uranium must be increased by at least 750 kg, proportionally increasing the mass of heavy water. But there were no more reserves of either one or the other. The end of the Third Reich was inexorably approaching. On April 23, Haigerloch was entered American troops. The reactor was dismantled and transported to the USA.

Meanwhile overseas

In parallel with the Germans (with only a slight lag), the development of atomic weapons began in England and the USA. They began with a letter sent in September 1939 by Albert Einstein to US President Franklin Roosevelt. The initiators of the letter and the authors of most of the text were physicists-emigrants from Hungary Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner and Edward Teller. The letter drew the president's attention to the fact that Nazi Germany was conducting active research, as a result of which it might soon acquire an atomic bomb.

In 1933, German communist Klaus Fuchs fled to England. Having received a degree in physics from the University of Bristol, he continued to work. In 1941, Fuchs reported his participation in atomic research to Soviet intelligence agent Jurgen Kuczynski, who informed Soviet ambassador Ivan Maisky. He instructed the military attache to urgently establish contact with Fuchs, who was going to be transported to the United States as part of a group of scientists. Fuchs agreed to work for Soviet intelligence. Many Soviet illegal intelligence officers were involved in working with him: the Zarubins, Eitingon, Vasilevsky, Semenov and others. As a result of their active work, already in January 1945 the USSR had a description of the design of the first atomic bomb. At the same time, the Soviet station in the United States reported that the Americans would need at least one year, but no more than five years, to create a significant arsenal of atomic weapons. The report also said that the first two bombs could be detonated within a few months. Pictured is Operation Crossroads, a series of atomic bomb tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll in the summer of 1946. The goal was to test the effect of atomic weapons on ships.

In the USSR, the first information about the work carried out by both the allies and the enemy was reported to Stalin by intelligence back in 1943. A decision was immediately made to launch similar work in the Union. Thus began the Soviet atomic project. Not only scientists received assignments, but also intelligence officers, for whom the extraction of nuclear secrets became a top priority.

The most valuable information about the work on the atomic bomb in the United States, obtained by intelligence, greatly helped the advancement of the Soviet nuclear project. The scientists participating in it were able to avoid dead-end search paths, thereby significantly accelerating the achievement of the final goal.

Experience of recent enemies and allies

Naturally, the Soviet leadership could not remain indifferent to the German nuclear development. At the end of the war, a group of Soviet physicists was sent to Germany, among whom were future academicians Artsimovich, Kikoin, Khariton, Shchelkin. Everyone was camouflaged in the uniform of Red Army colonels. The operation was led by First Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Ivan Serov, which opened any doors. In addition to the necessary German scientists, the “colonels” found tons of uranium metal, which, according to Kurchatov, shortened the work on the Soviet bomb by at least a year. The Americans also removed a lot of uranium from Germany, taking along the specialists who worked on the project. And in the USSR, in addition to physicists and chemists, they sent mechanics, electrical engineers, and glassblowers. Some were found in prisoner of war camps. For example, Max Steinbeck, the future Soviet academician and vice-president of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR, was taken away when, at the whim of the camp commander, he was making a sundial. In total, at least 1,000 German specialists worked on the nuclear project in the USSR. The von Ardenne laboratory with a uranium centrifuge, equipment from the Kaiser Institute of Physics, documentation, and reagents were completely removed from Berlin. As part of the atomic project, laboratories “A”, “B”, “C” and “D” were created, the scientific directors of which were scientists who arrived from Germany.

K.A. Petrzhak and G. N. Flerov In 1940, in the laboratory of Igor Kurchatov, two young physicists discovered a new, very peculiar appearance radioactive decay atomic nuclei - spontaneous fission.

Laboratory “A” was led by Baron Manfred von Ardenne, a talented physicist who developed a method of gas diffusion purification and separation of uranium isotopes in a centrifuge. At first, his laboratory was located on Oktyabrsky Pole in Moscow. Each German specialist was assigned five or six Soviet engineers. Later the laboratory moved to Sukhumi, and over time the famous Kurchatov Institute grew up on Oktyabrsky Field. In Sukhumi, on the basis of the von Ardenne laboratory, the Sukhumi Institute of Physics and Technology was formed. In 1947, Ardenne was awarded the Stalin Prize for creating a centrifuge for purifying uranium isotopes in industrial scale. Six years later, Ardenne became a two-time Stalinist laureate. He lived with his wife in a comfortable mansion, his wife played music on a piano brought from Germany. Other German specialists were not offended either: they came with their families, brought with them furniture, books, paintings, and were provided with good salaries and food. Were they prisoners? Academician A.P. Aleksandrov, himself an active participant in the atomic project, noted: “Of course, the German specialists were prisoners, but we ourselves were prisoners.”

Nikolaus Riehl, a native of St. Petersburg who moved to Germany in the 1920s, became the head of Laboratory B, which conducted research in the field of radiation chemistry and biology in the Urals (now the city of Snezhinsk). Here, Riehl worked with his old friend from Germany, the outstanding Russian biologist-geneticist Timofeev-Resovsky (“Bison” based on the novel by D. Granin).

In December 1938, German physicists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann were the first in the world to artificially split the nucleus of a uranium atom.

Having received recognition in the USSR as a researcher and talented organizer who knows how to find effective solutions the most complex problems, Dr. Riehl became one of key figures Soviet nuclear project. After successful test Soviet bomb he became a Hero of Socialist Labor and a laureate of the Stalin Prize.

The work of Laboratory "B", organized in Obninsk, was headed by Professor Rudolf Pose, one of the pioneers in the field of nuclear research. Under his leadership, fast neutron reactors were created, the first nuclear power plant in the Union, and the design of reactors for submarines. The facility in Obninsk became the basis for the organization of the Physics and Energy Institute named after A.I. Leypunsky. Pose worked until 1957 in Sukhumi, then at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna.

In the 30s of the last century, many physicists worked on creating an atomic bomb. It is officially believed that the United States was the first to create, test and use the atomic bomb. However, recently I read books by Hans-Ulrich von Kranz, a researcher of the secrets of the Third Reich, where he claims that the Nazis invented the bomb, and the world's first atomic bomb was tested by them in March 1944 in Belarus. The Americans seized all the documents about the atomic bomb, the scientists, and the samples themselves (there were supposedly 13 of them). So the Americans had access to 3 samples, and the Germans transported 10 to a secret base in Antarctica. Krantz confirms his conclusions by the fact that after Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the United States there was no news of testing bombs larger than 1.5, and after that the tests were unsuccessful. This, in his opinion, would have been impossible if the bombs had been created by the United States itself.

We are unlikely to know the truth.

In one thousand nine hundred and forty, Enrico Fermi finished working on a theory called the Nuclear Chain Reaction. After this, the Americans created their first nuclear reactor. In one thousand nine hundred and forty-five, the Americans created three atomic bombs. The first was blown up in New Mexico, and the next two were dropped on Japan.

It is hardly possible to specifically name any person that he is the creator of atomic (nuclear) weapons. Without the discoveries of predecessors there would have been no final result. But many people call Otto Hahn, a German by birth, a nuclear chemist, the father of the atomic bomb. Apparently, it was his discoveries in the field of nuclear fission, together with Fritz Strassmann, that can be considered fundamental in the creation of nuclear weapons.

Father Soviet weapons mass destruction It is generally accepted to consider Igor Kurchatov and Soviet intelligence and Klaus Fuchs personally. However, we should not forget about the discoveries of our scientists in the late 30s. Work on uranium fission was carried out by A.K. Peterzhak and G.N. Flerov.

The atomic bomb is a product that was not invented immediately. It took dozens of years of various studies to reach the result. Before specimens were first invented in 1945, many experiments and discoveries were carried out. All scientists who are related to these works can be counted among the creators of the atomic bomb. Besom speaks directly about the team of inventors of the bomb itself, then there was a whole team, it’s better to read about it on Wikipedia.

Participated in the creation of the atomic bomb a large number of scientists and engineers from various industries. It would be unfair to name just one. The material from Wikipedia does not mention the French physicist Henri Becquerel, the Russian scientists Pierre Curie and his wife Maria Sklodowska-Curie, who discovered the radioactivity of uranium, and the German theoretical physicist Albert Einstein.

Quite an interesting question.

After reading information on the Internet, I came to the conclusion that the USSR and the USA began working on creating these bombs at the same time.

I think you will read in more detail in the article. Everything is written there in great detail.

Many discoveries have their own parents, but inventions are often the collective result of a common cause, when everyone contributed. In addition, many inventions are, as it were, a product of their era, so work on them is carried out simultaneously in different laboratories. so with the atomic bomb, it does not have one single parent.

Quite a difficult task, it is difficult to say who exactly invented the atomic bomb, because many scientists were involved in its appearance, who consistently worked on the study of radioactivity, uranium enrichment, chain reaction of fission of heavy nuclei, etc. Here are the main points of its creation:

By 1945, American scientists had invented two atomic bombs Baby weighed 2722 kg and was equipped with enriched Uranium-235 and Fat man with a charge of Plutonium-239 with a power of more than 20 kt, it had a mass of 3175 kg.

On given time completely different in size and shape

Work on nuclear projects in the USA and USSR began simultaneously. In July 1945, an American atomic bomb (Robert Oppenheimer, head of the laboratory) was exploded at the test site, and then, in August, bombs were also dropped on the infamous Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The first test of a Soviet bomb took place in 1949 (project manager Igor Kurchatov), ​​but as they say, its creation was made possible thanks to excellent intelligence.

There is also information that the creators of the atomic bomb were the Germans. You can, for example, read about this here..

There is simply no clear answer to this question - many talented physicists and chemists worked on the creation of deadly weapons capable of destroying the planet, whose names are listed in this article - as we see, the inventor was far from alone.