Yulii Khariton

Yulii Borisovich Khariton (Template:Langx; 27 February 1904 – 18 December 1996) was a Russian physicist who was a leading scientist in the former Soviet program of nuclear weapons.<ref name="nuclearweaponarchive">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Independent Russia Bureau">Template:Cite newsTemplate:Cbignore</ref>

Since the initiation of the Soviet program of developing the atomic bomb by Joseph Stalin in 1943, Khariton was the "chief nuclear weapon designer" and remained associated with the Soviet program for nearly four decades. In honour of the centennial of his birthday in 2004, his image appeared on a Russian postal stamp by the Russian government.<ref name="Atomic Heritage Foundation">Template:Cite web</ref>

Biography

Family, early life and education

Yulii Borisovich Khariton was born in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, to an ethnic middle class Russian Jewish family, on 27 February 1904.Template:Rp<ref name="Oxford University Press, Hargittai">Template:Cite book</ref> His father, Boris Osipovich Khariton, was a political journalist, editor, and publisher who had attained a law degree from Kiev University in Ukraine.Template:RpTemplate:Rp<ref name="Oxford University Press, Hargittai"/><ref name="Подвиг Юлия Борисовича Харитона">Подвиг Юлия Борисовича Харитона Template:Webarchive Template:In lang</ref> His father worked for the newspaper Rech, the main organ of the Constitutional Democratic Party, and was a well known figure in the political circles of Russia.<ref name="Подвиг Юлия Борисовича Харитона"/> After the Russian revolution dismantled the Tsarist autocracy in 1917, Boris Khariton had clashes with the Bolsheviks due to his opposition to Vladimir Lenin's Soviet ideology.Template:Rp<ref name="Oxford University Press, Hargittai"/> His father was exiled to the Baltic states from Russia in 1922 at the age of forty six along with professors and journalists on one of the so-called Philosophers' ships, subsequently working for an emigrant newspaper in Latvia.<ref>Человек столетия, или как создавался ядерный щит России Template:WebarchiveTemplate:In lang</ref>

His father, Boris Khariton, remained there until Latvia's annexation by the Soviet Union in 1940 and, at the age of sixty-four, was then arrested by the NKVD and sentenced to seven years of forced labour in a Gulag, where he died.Template:Rp<ref name="Oxford University Press, Hargittai"/>

Yulii's mother, Mirra Yakovlevna Burovskaya, was a theatre actress who performed at the Moscow Art Theatre. She left Russia in 1910 due to an illness that had to be treated at the European resort.Template:Rp<ref name="Oxford University Press, Hargittai"/> Yulii was six years old when his mother left him and was taken care by an Estonian woman, hired by his father while in exile in Latvia.Template:Rp<ref name="Prometheus Books, Hargittai (tel)">Template:Cite book</ref> Yulii's mother never returned to Russia and divorced his father, only to marry her psychiatrist, Dr. Max Eitingon.Template:Rp<ref name="Oxford University Press, Hargittai"/>

Having lived in Germany, Mirra moved to Tel Aviv in Palestine in 1933, where she remained until her death.Template:Rp<ref name="Oxford University Press, Hargittai"/> She is buried in Jerusalem.Template:Rp<ref name="Oxford University Press, Hargittai"/>

Yulii was forbidden to contact his parents after he had started classified work in the Soviet Union. His travels were highly restricted by the Soviet Union and later by Russia.<ref>Оппенгеймер и Харитон: параллели жизни Template:Webarchive Template:In lang</ref>

Yulii was home schooled by his Estonian housekeeper, hired by his father, who taught him the German language.Template:Rp<ref name="Oxford University Press, Hargittai"/> At the age of eleven, he began attending regular school.Template:Rp<ref name="Oxford University Press, Hargittai"/> In Saint Petersburg, he went to attend a trade school which he completed at the age of fifteen and found work at a local mechanical workshop where he learned how to operate various machinery as a machinist.Template:Rp<ref name="Oxford University Press, Hargittai"/>

In 1920, he enrolled in the Leningrad Polytechnical Institute to study mechanical engineering but later chose to study physics, which he found to be more stimulating.Template:Rp<ref name="Oxford University Press, Hargittai"/> He studied physics under Russian physicists, Abram Ioffe, Nikolay Semyonov, and Alexander Friedmann. Khariton was particularly fascinated with the work of Semyonov whose research used the techniques of physics in chemistry, which Semyonov called "chemical physics.".Template:Rp<ref name="Oxford University Press, Hargittai"/> Khariton's talent was recognised by Semyonov who supported his research project in investigations of the light-emitting ability of phosphorus combined with oxygen, and reported the results in both the German and Russian languages.Template:Rp<ref name="Oxford University Press, Hargittai"/> In 1926, Khariton completed his degree in physics from the Leningrad Polytechnical Institute and ended his research project as he prepared for his first foreign trip to England. Template:Rp<ref name="Oxford University Press, Hargittai"/>

Before departing, he was introduced to Pyotr Kapitsa by Semyonov who asked the latter to help Yulii secure a fellowship at the Cavendish Laboratory in England. In England, Khariton attended the University of Cambridge to do his doctoral in physics under Ernest Rutherford in 1926.Template:Rp<ref name="Oxford University Press, Hargittai"/> At Cambridge, he worked with James Chadwick on investigating the sensitivity of the eye with respect to weak light impulses and alpha radiation. Khariton earned his PhD in 1928 from Cambridge University.Template:Rp<ref name="Oxford University Press, Hargittai"/>

Soviet program of nuclear weapons

In 1928, Khariton decided to take up the residence in (Germany) to be near his mother, but was appalled and frightened by the political propaganda of the Nazi Party in Germany; therefore returning to Soviet Union while his mother left for Palestine.Template:Rp<ref name="Oxford University Press, Hargittai" />

In 1931, he joined the Institute of Chemical Physics and eventually headed the explosion laboratory until 1946, working closely with another Russian physicist Yakov Zeldovich, on exothermic chemical chain reactions.Template:Rp<ref name="Oxford University Press, Hargittai" />

In 1935, he received his doctorate in physical and mathematical sciences. During this period, Khariton and Zeldovich conducted experiments on the chain reactions of uranium. In August 1939, Zeldovich, Khariton and Aleksandr Leipunskii delivered papers on the theoretical process behind nuclear fission chain reactions at a conference in Kharkiv, Ukraine; this was the last pre-war discussion of chain reactions in the USSR.<ref name="Sakharov">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="VNIIEF">Template:Cite web</ref>

During World War II, Khariton's knowledge of the physics of explosions was used in experimental studies on Soviet and foreign weaponry, while continuing his leadership of the Institute of Chemical Physics.<ref name="Rosatom">Template:Cite web</ref>

Physicist Igor Kurchatov asked Khariton to become part of the Soviet atomic project in 1943, in Laboratory No. 2 of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In May 1945, as part of a team of physicists sent to Berlin to investigate Nazi atomic bomb research, Khariton found 100 tonnes of uranium oxide, which was transported back to Moscow; this reduced development time for domestic plutonium production. After the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a Special Committee was established including Kurchatov and Khariton. Khariton was made scientific director of KB-11 (design bureau-11) also known as Arzamas-16 and colloquially as the 'Installation', located in the closed city of Sarov, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast to develop Soviet nuclear weapons (the organisation is now known as the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics (VNIIEF). Khariton remained as its scientific director for 46 years. Along with other senior scientists, he was regarded as too important to fly and had his own private train carriage. He was elected as a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union in 1946, and as a full member in 1953.<ref name="Rosatom"/><ref name="Sakharov"/>

In 1949, he and Kirill Shchelkin reported to the Special Committee on the progress of the first Soviet nuclear weapon, the RDS-1, which was tested on 29 August that year. He was deferential to political superiors but supported the scientists under him in a politic and diplomatic way. Physicist and departmental head Andrei Sakharov referred to him as being "zealous and unsparing of himself.";<ref name="VNIIEF"/> he spoke for scientists when they changed their focus to a two-stage nuclear device with initial compression from 1954 (the RDS-37) and supported requests not to detonate the RDS-220 (the largest-ever bomb) because of the calculated number of deaths due to radioactive fallout. He would not support similar requests to halt a duplicate test by a second 'Installation' at Snezhinsk which he felt was divisive, and wouldn't intercede in certain politically-charged personal cases.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

His diplomacy meant absorbing criticism and put-downs from political leaders who came and went. KB-11 was sometimes sneered at for having a significant number of staff with Jewish backgrounds, Khariton included. The second Installation under Yevgeny Zababakhin had fewer, and there had been awkward professional relations; it was comically referred to as "Egypt" by politicians, with obvious comparative implications with KB-11: the dining room at KB-11 was termed 'the synagogue.'<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Awards and legacy

• Hero of Socialist Labour (1949, 1951, 1954)
• Stalin Prize (1949, 1951, 1953)
• Order of Lenin (1949, 1956, 1962, 1964, 1974, 1984)
• Lenin Prize (1956)
• Order of the October Revolution (1971)
• Order of the Red Banner of Labour (1945)
• Order of the Red Star (1944)
• Gold Medal of I. V. Kurchatov (1974)
• Great Gold Medal of M. V. Lomonosov (1982)

In October 1997 in Sarov, Togliati Street was renamed Akademik Khariton Street in his honour. A bronze bust of him was installed in February 2004 next to the House of Scientists of VNIIEF. In 2004, a Russian stamp was issued to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birthday.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

See also

• Russian Alsos
• Kharitonchik

External links

• Khariton's photo – from the Russian Academy of Sciences
• Annotated bibliography for Yuli Khariton from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
• HER SON, THE ATOMIC SCIENTIST: MIRRA BIRENS, YULI KHARITON, AND MAX EITINGON'S SERVICES FOR THE SOVIETS