ANDREI SAKHAROV:
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
I was born on May 21 , 1921 , in Moscow. My father was a
well-known physics teacher and the author of textbooks and popular
science books. My childhood was spent in a large communal apart–
ment where most rooms were occupied by our relatives with only a
few outsiders mixed in. Our home preserved the traditional atmos–
phere of a numerous and close family - respect for hard work and
ability , mutual aid, love for literature and science . My father played
the piano well; his favorites were Chopin , Grieg, Beethoven, and
Scriabin. During the Civil War he earned a living by playing the
piano in a silent movie theatre. I recall with particular fondness
Maria Petrovna, my grandmother and the soul of our family, who
died before World War II at the age of seventy-nine. Family influ–
ences were especially strong in my case because I received my early
schooling at home and then had difficulty relating to my own age
group .
After graduating high school with honors in 1938, I enrolled in
the Physics Department of Moscow University. When war began,
our classes were evacuated to Ashkhabad where I graduated with
honors in 1942 . That summer I was assigned work for several weeks
in Kovrov, and then I was employed on a logging operation in a
remote settlement near Melekess. My first vivid impression of the
life of workers and peasants dates from that difficult summer of 1942.
In September I was sent to a large arms factory on the Volga, where
I worked as an engineer until 1945.
I developed several inventions to improve inspection proce–
dures at that factory. (In my university years I did not manage to
engage in original scientific work.) While still at the factory in 1944, I
wrote several articles on theoretical physics which I sent to Moscow
for review. Those first articles have never been published, but they
gave me the confidence in my powers which is essential for a
scientist.
In 1945 I became a graduate student at the Lebedev Institute of
Physics. My advisor, the outstanding theoretical physicist, Igor
Tamm, who later became a member of the Academy of Sciences and
a Nobel laureate, greatly influenced my career. In 1948 I was in–
cluded in Tamm's research group which developed a thermonuclear
weapon . I spent the next twenty years continuously working in con-
