Andrei Sakharov (1921-1989) was a prominent Soviet physicist, dissident, and human rights activist. He is best known for his role in the development of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, but he later became a vocal advocate for civil liberties, nuclear disarmament, and human rights in the Soviet Union. Sakharov's scientific achievements earned him significant acclaim, including the Lenin Prize in 1966.
Articles by others on the same topic
Andrei Sakharov connected the cosmic excess of matter over antimatter with microscopic particle reactions. His 1967 paper proposed baryon number violation and CP violation in the expanding early universe as ingredients for generating a baryon asymmetry. The resulting Sakharov conditions also require departure from thermal equilibrium in the usual reaction-based setting: otherwise inverse reactions and symmetry constraints erase the attempted asymmetry. This turns an astronomical abundance question into a test of particle interactions and cosmological history.[ref]
Violation of CP invariance, C asymmetry, and baryon asymmetry of the universe by Andrei Sakharov. 1967 original note: baryon-number nonconservation, CP violation and expanding-universe mechanism
Portrait of Andrei Sakharov
. RIA Novosti archive, image 25981 / Vladimir Fedorenko / CC-BY-SA 3.0; photographed 1 March 1989. Existing Commons close-up crop by JB Hoang Tam 2 (2025). CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source..jpg){kind=link}