Andrei Sakharov: Spokesman For The Conscience of Mankind

The death of my friend Andrei Sakharov on Dec. 14, 1989, silenced the voice of "the spokesman for the conscience of mankind," as he was called by the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize Committee. Sakharov was most widely known as the father of the Soviet H-bomb and was admired for his courageous leadership in defense of human rights, and in the quest for peace. As important as these efforts were to the course of world history, his physics colleagues like myself also recognized a great scientist whose brilliant career as a theoretical physicist was distinguished by seminal research contributions to fundamental physics, including the behavior of plasmas and the properties of elementary particles. In fact, it was at a physics seminar in Moscow in 1974 that I first met Sakharov and we began a friendship built around our shared physics interests as well as our mutual concerns about human rights and the dangers of a world heavily armed with nuclear weapons. We managed to stay in contact during his seven years of confinement in Gorky, and shared the great pleasure of being able to meet again, both in Moscow and in Stanford after his release from internal exile in 1987. Happily, he lived to witness and to participate actively in the beginning of the political reforms in the Soviet Union for which he had fought so courageously. Sakharov joined the Soviet hydrogen bomb effort in 1948, with "no doubts as to the vital importance of creating a Soviet superweapon - for our country and for the balance of power throughout the world," according to his own recollections. In 1950 Sakharov, together with fellow physicist Igor Tamm - a Nobel laureate, an internationally honored and greatly admired leader of Soviet physics, and Andrei's teacher - wrote the pioneering paper in the controlled fusion effort in the Soviet Union. In this paper they introduced a confinement scheme for a hot plasma that is famous today under the name Tokamak. This is one of the very promising methods now being pursued around the world for developing fusion as a practical source of energy. Sakharov also made a contribution of crucial importance to our quest to understand the evolution of our universe following its physical beginnings in the Big Bang. The problem he addressed is this: Physicists know that for each form of matter, there also occurs antimatter - for example, electrons and positrons; protons and antiprotons. Antimatter is a necessary consequence of joining the general principles of atomic theory - that is, the quantum theory - with Einstein's special theory of relativity, the theory on the basis of which we understand his equation E=MCý. But we must wonder then what has happened to all the antimatter? Where did it go? In our universe why are the massive systems of stars and galaxies made almost exclusively of matter and not antimatter? If the universe at the time of the Big Bang had no matter or antimatter - just energy - why do we now have our excess of matter over antimatter? In 1967, Sakharov provided the clue for understanding this. His was the leap of imagination to see that the absence of antimatter can be explained rather elegantly by joining a recent experimental observation (by a team led by American physicists James Cronin and Val Fitch, who shared the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work) that there is a very tiny difference between the behavior of matter and of antimatter with several general postulates that separately had been made in other contexts. The most intriguing of these postulates is that the proton may in fact decay just like other forms of subnuclear matter, albeit very slowly. This bold hypothesis is being tested in laboratories around the world. The experiments are very difficult and require massive equipment. No one has yet seen a proton decay, so the hypothesis has yet to be confirmed. When the history books of the latter part of the 20th century are written they will tell that this was a time when mankind was first able to begin writing a history of the evolution of the universe that is based on solid experimental data and theoretical concepts. And in that chapter of history, as in other chapters of our times, Andrei's name will surely appear, this time as Andrei Sakharov, physicist. Sakharov was elected in 1953 at the age of 32 to the USSR Academy of Sciences, its youngest full member. By 1957 his concern about radioactive fallout from Soviet nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere moved him to a politically active role that tested the limits acceptable to Soviet authorities. His position was vindicated in 1963 when the Soviet Union, the U.S., and Great Britain signed the limited atmospheric test ban treaty that confined nuclear testing to underground shots that created none of the dangerous fallout. For four more years, Sakharov strove against censorship - finally breaking into print in 1967 with his remarkable essay on Progress, Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom, which was published in the West in 1968. The two basic theses that Sakharov develops in this essay are: (1) the division of mankind threatens it with destruction; and (2) intellectual freedom is essential to human society. His arguments remain as valid and compelling today as they were when they first appeared. This essay publicly marked Sakharov's conversion from a scientist in search of nature's principles for the structure of matter to a moral leader in search of ethical principles for a humanity striving for peace, progress, and freedom. Following its publication, Sakharov frequently spoke out on the gravity of the threat of nuclear holocaust. In his 1975 book, My Country and My World (Random House, New York), he wrote: "The unchecked growth of thermonuclear arsenals and the build-up toward confrontation threaten mankind with the death of civilization and physical annihilation. The elimination of that threat takes unquestionable priority over all other problems in international relations. This is why disarmament talks, which offer a ray of hope in the dark world of suicidal nuclear madness, are so important." Sakharov was a model for all scientists who enter the political realm and participate in public debate on the implications of scientific advances. He spoke out courageously, passionately, and with outrage when appropriate, on issues of social injustice and oppression; but, when speaking as a scientist on technical issues, he recognized that scientists bear a special responsibility to speak accurately and to maintain the same high standards that we demand in our professional scientific lives. It was my great privilege to know Andrei Sakharov - and his equally courageous and wonderful wife Yelena Bonner - as close friends. He was an inspiration to all who knew him or knew of him. Constant in purpose, clear in vision, modest, and unflinching in his courage to speak out in circumstances of great personal danger, he inspired support, admiration, and devotion from people of all nations. Sidney Drell is a professor and deputy director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Stanford University.

Andrei Sakharov: Spokesman For The Conscience of Mankind

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of