Andrei Sakharov

Born on May 21, 1921 Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov was a nuclear physicist, human rights activist and anti-Soviet dissident. He was the designer of the Third Idea which is the codename of Soviet thermonuclear weapons. He was award the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975 and has an award, The Sakharov Prize, named in his honor.
In 1948 Sakharov developed a different type of hydrogen bomb. His first device was exploded on August 29, 1949 and Sakharov became a key player in the development of the first megaton range hydrogen bomb for the Soviet Union. Sakharov used radiation implosion to test the RDS-37 in 1955. Sakharov's design was the 50 Mt Tsar Bomba of October 1961. It was the most powerful nuclear device exploded.
Sakharov's idea was to control nuclear fusion and he developed a nuclear fusion reactor or the tokamak. He invented, in 1951, the first explosively pumped flux compression generator or magnetocumulative generator. He then worked on a MK-driven plasma cannon that vaporized aluminum rings by huge eddy currents into a stable and self-confined toroidal plasmoid.
Sakharov was concerned about the political and moral implications of his work. He was totally against nuclear proliferation and played a role in the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty. 1968 Sakharov compiled a paper entitled Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom describing anti-ballistic missile defenses as major threats of global nuclear war. After this writing Sakharov was expelled from all military nuclear research. He became known as a traitor in the Soviet Union. For his protests against intervention in Afghanistan in 1979 Sakharov was exiled to Gorky and tight control was kept on him through 1980 to 1986. In 1984 his wife Yelena Bonner was kept from traveling to the United States for heart surgery. Sakharov went on a hunger strike, but was hospitalized and forced fed. His wife was sentenced to exile in Gorky. She was finally allowed to go to the U.S. for surgery.
Sakharov died on December 14, 1989 from a heart attack. He was only 68.