Theoretical physicist and the "father of the Soviet H-bomb," Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989), who was born in Moscow on May 21, became a prominent human rights activist and the first Russian to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Andrei Sakharov, 1921–1989. Sakharov, one of the Soviet Union's leading theoretical physicists and regarded in scientific circles as the "father of the Soviet atomic bomb," also became Soviet Russia's most prominent political dissident in the 1970s. (© Bettmann/Corbis.)

Sakharov's father was a physics teacher and popular science author. World War II shortened his study of physics at Moscow University. After two years of work in a munitions factory, in 1945 he went on to graduate study in theoretical physics under Igor Tamm (1895–1971). In 1948 the Soviet government assigned Tamm's group, including Sakharov, to research the feasibility of a thermonuclear bomb. In a few months Sakharov suggested a new idea that was instrumental in the development...