Andrei Sakharov

Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov was born 21 May 1921 and trained as a physicist in a state that needed the bomb. He oversaw the development of Soviet thermonuclear weapons while also working in particle physics, magnetism, and cosmology — the kind of range that marks someone who sees past the assignment. Then he turned. He began emphasizing human rights, individual freedom, and civil liberties inside a system built to crush them, and the Soviet establishment labeled him a dissident and persecuted him for it. In 1975 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for that work. He died 14 December 1989, and…