Ernest Orlando Lawrence was an American nuclear physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 for his invention of the cyclotron. He is known for his work on uranium-isotope separation for the Manhattan Project, as well as for founding the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov, was a Soviet physicist who played a central role in organizing and directing the former Soviet program of nuclear weapons.
Mohammad Abdus Salam was a Pakistani theoretical physicist. He shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics with Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg for his contribution to the electroweak unification theory. He was the first Pakistani and the first scientist from an Islamic country to receive a Nobel Prize and the second from an Islamic country to receive any Nobel Prize, after Anwar Sadat of Egypt.
Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich, also known as YaB, D.N. was a leading Soviet physicist of Belarusian origin, who is known for his prolific contributions in physical cosmology, physics of thermonuclear reactions, combustion, and hydrodynamical phenomena.
Yulii Borisovich Khariton was a Russian physicist who was a leading scientist in the former Soviet program of nuclear weapons.
Robert Rathbun Wilson was an American physicist known for his work on the Manhattan Project during World War II, as a sculptor, and as an architect of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), where he was the first director from 1967 to 1978.
The Soviet atomic bomb project was the classified research and development program that was authorized by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union to develop nuclear weapons during and after World War II.
RDS-37 was the Soviet Union's first two-stage hydrogen bomb, first tested on 22 November 1955. The weapon had a nominal yield of approximately 3 megatons. It was scaled down to 1.6 megatons for the live test.
José Leite Lopes was a Brazilian theoretical physicist who worked in the field of quantum field theory and particle physics.
Bruno Pontecorvo was an Italian and Soviet nuclear physicist, an early assistant of Enrico Fermi and the author of numerous studies in high energy physics, especially on neutrinos. A convinced communist, he defected to the Soviet Union in 1950, where he continued his research on the decay of the muon and on neutrinos. The prestigious Pontecorvo Prize was instituted in his memory in 1995.
Atomic spies or atom spies were people in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada who are known to have illicitly given information about nuclear weapons production or design to the Soviet Union during World War II and the early Cold War. Exactly what was given, and whether everyone on the list gave it, are still matters of some scholarly dispute. In some cases, some of the arrested suspects or government witnesses had given strong testimonies or confessions which they recanted later or said were fabricated. Their work constitutes the most publicly well-known and well-documented case of nuclear espionage in the history of nuclear weapons. At the same time, numerous nuclear scientists wanted to share the information with the world scientific community, but this proposal was firmly quashed by the United States government.
Tony Hilton Royle Skyrme was a British physicist who was born in Lewisham.
Wang Ganchang was a Chinese nuclear physicist. He was one of the founding fathers of Chinese nuclear physics, cosmic rays and particle physics. Wang was also a leader in the fields of detonation physics experiments, anti-electromagnetic pulse technology, nuclear explosion detection, anti-nuclear radiation technology, and laser stimulated nuclear explosion technologies.
Riazuddin, also spelled as Riaz-Ud-Din, was a Pakistani theoretical physicist, specialising in high-energy physics and nuclear physics. Starting his scientific research in physics in 1958, Riazuddin was considered one of the early pioneers of Pakistan's nuclear weapons development and atomic deterrence development. He was the director of the Theoretical Physics Group (TPG) of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) from 1974 until 1984. Riazuddin was a pupil of the winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics, Abdus Salam.
The idea that matter consists of smaller particles and that there exists a limited number of sorts of primary, smallest particles in nature has existed in natural philosophy at least since the 6th century BC. Such ideas gained physical credibility beginning in the 19th century, but the concept of "elementary particle" underwent some changes in its meaning: notably, modern physics no longer deems elementary particles indestructible. Even elementary particles can decay or collide destructively; they can cease to exist and create (other) particles in result.
Eric Henry Stoneley Burhop, was an Australian physicist and humanitarian.
The RDS-2 nuclear warhead was created and designed by the Soviet Union during the late 1940s and early 1950s. RDS-2 was first secretly tested on September 24, 1951, at a Soviet test site in Kazakhstan. RDS-2 was a plutonium only device with an estimated yield of 38 kt.
The All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics (VNIIEF) is a research institute based in Sarov, Russia and established in 1947. During the Soviet era, it was known as KB-11 and All-Soviet (All-Union) Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics. It is currently part of the Rosatom group.
Evsei Markovich RabinovichD.N, was a Russian physicist of Ukrainian origin who participated in the former Soviet program of nuclear weapons, and was one of the designers of the two-stage RDS-37 thermonuclear discharges and its successor, the RDS-220, the largest ever bomb.
