by Andrei GAGARINSKY, Dr. Sc. (Phys. & Math.), adviser to the director of the National Research Center "Kurchatov Institute", Yekaterina YATSISHINA, deputy director for coordination and development of public relations of the NRC "Kurchatov Institute" (Moscow) On April 12, 1943, the Vice-President of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Academician Alexander Baikov, signed an order on setting up Laboratory No. 2 of the USSR Academy of Sciences-what was to become the National Research Center "Kurchatov Institute". Founded 70 years ago to make the first Soviet atom bomb, it played a key role for the country's security, and pioneered in many lines of research, actually covering the entire range of contemporary science. Winter of 1943. The Great Patriotic War in full swing. Sovinformbureau News Agency reporting on victories of Soviet troops at the battle-fronts. But the Soviet press was silent on the most important event that would subsequently impact the course of history-both of our country and of the world at large. On September 28, 1942, the USSR State Defense Committee issued a secret order (No. 2352ss) on starting work on uranium; this order outlined targets for what was called the uranium problem-and that was to develop Monument to the founder of the National Research Center "Kurchatov Institute" Acad. Igor Kurchatov unveiled in 1971 in the Moscow square named after him. Sculptor, lulian Rukavishnikov. стр. 59 nuclear weapons. The works that started in 1943 at Moscow Laboratory No. 2 of the USSR Academy of Sciences, was supervised by a 40-year-old professor of the Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute, Igor Kurchatov (elected to the national Academy of Sciences in 1943).* Authorized to enlist research institutes, design bureaus and enterprises as well as specialists from the army in the field and military plants, he gathered the flower of the country's researchers, mainly physicists from the Leningrad Physico-Technical Instit ... Читать далее