安德烈·萨哈罗夫，Biography for Andrei Sakharov ad feedbackDate of Birth 21 May 1921, Moscow, Russia Date of Death 14 December 1989, Moscow, USSR [now Russia] (heart attack) Birth Name Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov Mini Biography Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov was born on May 21, 1921, in Moscow. His father, named Dmitri Ivanovich Sakharov, was a distinguished scientist, a writer of science, and a pedagogy. He also had a hobby of playing piano for silent films and at home. His mother, named Ekaterina Alekseevna was the daughter of a distinguished General, Aleksei Sophiano, who was a Greek-Russian aristocrat in Moscow. Young Andrei Sakharov was a voracious reader. He graduated from high school with excellence. From 1938, Sakharov studied physics at Moscow State University. He graduated 'cum laude' in 1942, while the university was evacuated in Ashkhabad, Turkmenistan during WWII. Sakharov made a number of inventions for the Soviet military industry during the Second World War. He earned his Ph. D. in 1947 and was included in the top-secret Soviet thermonuclear research group under Igor Tamm. In 1949-50 Sakharov became the co-inventor of the controlled hydrogen reaction. Today he is known as "the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb." He was secretly awarded the State Prize by Joseph Stalin, who had a personal meeting with Sakharov and Lavrenti Beria, the chief of NKVD/KGB. After giving the hydrogen bomb to Joseph Stalin Sakharov himself went through a dramatic moral transformation. He wrote in his 'Memoirs' that from 1952-1961 he grew to realization that his invention is extremely harmful in the hands of politicians, and it caused him a serious moral pain. Sakharov rose to become a staunch opponent of the nuclear tests and made a political statement in 1961, causing anger from Nikita Khrushchev. During the Cuban missile crisis, Sakharov had a clear vision of the danger that his mighty invention may cause in the hands of undereducated career politicians, who exterminated millions of their own