A pioneer of two-stage thermonuclear design
A 1955 memo from Zeldovich to Khariton stated: “The atomic implosion idea is due to Viktor Aleksandrovich Davidenko.”
Viktor Davidenko was a Soviet theoretical physicist and experimental researcher who helped shape the nuclear and thermonuclear weapons programme. He worked on neutron initiators and participated in the first Soviet atomic and hydrogen-bomb tests, while his late-1953 proposal to use an atomic explosion to compress a thermonuclear stage supplied the first conceptual step toward a two-stage design. The contribution fed into the subsequent work of Sakharov and Zeldovich and the Soviet thermonuclear system, but it was made within the secrecy and state direction of weapons science.
Career Timeline
- 1932–1937Leningrad Industrial Institute, student
- 1937–1940Leningrad Institute of Physics and Technology, researcher
- 1943–1948Laboratory No. 2 of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, researcher
- 1948–1952KB-11, researcher and department head
- 1952–1963KB-11, sector head and deputy scientific supervisor
- 1963–1983Kurchatov Institute and Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, researcher