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"Political intrigue, the arms race, early developments of nuclear science, espionage and more are all present in this gripping book … The book is crisply written and well worth the read. The text includes a number of translated segments of official documents plus extracts from memoirs of some of the people involved. So, although Pondrom sprinkles his opinions throughout, there is sufficient material to permit readers to make their own judgements. "
CERN
The book describes the lives of the people who gave Stalin his weapon — scientists, engineers, managers, and prisoners during the early post war years from 1945–1953. Many anecdotes and vicissitudes of life at that time in the Soviet Union accompany considerable technical information regarding the solutions to formidable problems of nuclear weapons development.
The contents should interest the reader who wants to learn more about this part of the history and politics in 20th century physics. The prevention of nuclear proliferation is a topic of current interest, and the procedure followed by the Soviet Union as described in this book will help to understand the complexities involved.
Sample Chapter(s)Introduction
Chapter 3: The Discovery of Fission of Uranium
Chapter 14: Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Range
Contents:
- Wartime Soviet Industry
- Development of Nuclear Physics Before the Discovery of Fission
- The Discovery of Fission of Uranium
- The Soviet Union and Stalin's Terror 1937–1939
- The Soviet Union and Nuclear Research 1934–1942
- The Manhattan Project Creates Los Alamos
- The Soviet Union Creates Laboratory #2
- Soviet Espionage and the Atomic Project
- Players in the Drama — Stalin, Beria, and Kurchatov
- Industrial Plants Move to the Urals
- The Soviet Union Creates Arzamas-16
- Uranium and Plutonium
- German Scientists and the Soviet Atomic Project
- Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Range
- Appendices:
- Nuclear Masses
- Controlled Nuclear Chain Reactions
- Isotope Separation
- Charged Particle Accelerators
- Spontaneous Fission of Uranium, K A Petrzhak and G N Flerov, JETP 10, 1013, (1940)
- Nuclear Weapons
- Encryption and Decryption
- Soviet Intelligence
- Critical Assemblies
Readership: Students, researchers, and general readers interested in physics and history of science.
