LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Andrei Sakharov: Agricultural Sciences
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Andrei Sakharov was one of Russia's top nuclear physicists. Elected to the USSR's elite Academy of Sciences at the age of 32, he was its youngest-ever member. During his career, the highest honours and medals were heaped upon him, up to and including the Nobel Prize. Yet although he was the genius behind his country's nuclear weapons programme, that was not why he received the Nobel Prize. As in Tolstoy's great Russian novel, it was the issues of War and Peace that came to be addressed by Dr Sakharov, who has been credited with providing the inspiration for the democratic movement that brought about the collapse of the USSR.
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Andrei Sakharov joined these efforts. In June 1964, the nomination of Lysenko's associate Nikolai Nuzhdin for full membership in the Academy of Sciences was scheduled for a vote. It would be a major step to challenge Lysenko in his presence. As Sakharov recounted in his memoirs, he did not look for allies but resolved on his own, in an “impulsive but fateful decision,” to take the lead against Nuzhdin. Unbeknownst to Sakharov at that time, several physicists and biologists, including Tamm and Leontovich, had been planning “a concerted attack on Nuzhdin” as well.
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Accolades from around the world poured out in testimony of Andrei Sakharov upon his death on 14 December 1989. He was saluted as “the saint and martyr of perestroika,” “history’s most peaceful rebel,” and “the embodiment of all that is good and decent in the human spirit.” Andrei Sakharov had indeed made a long journey from his days as a nuclear weapons physicist virtually unknown outside his country to an international figure universally respected for his uncompromising commitment to principle and opposition to injustice. In doing so, Sakharov had become a model for us all, especially for those from the physical sciences—such as this author—who have chosen to enter the realm of the policy makers to contribute technical advice on issues of national and international importance.
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After the war Sakharov undertook graduate work in the laboratory of Igor Tamm. He received his candidate's degree (roughly equivalent to a Ph.D.) in 1947. In the late 1940s, Sakharov conducted research that led to the explosion of the Soviet hydrogen bomb in 1953. The same year, he was elected a full member of Academy of Sciences. At thirty-two, he was the youngest member in the history of that institution.
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It came as no surprise to Sakharov that he was immediately relieved of his post and stripped of all his privileges as a member of the Nomenklatura. Henceforward he would be a marked man. Few of his like-minded colleagues would dare to be seen supporting him. Fair-weather friends retreated behind the woodwork. Articles appeared denouncing him as anti-Soviet and a traitor. Highly respected members of the Soviet Academy of Sciences signed letters of denunciation, widely publicised in newspapers and journals as 'open letters'. Newspapers ... concocted angry letters purporting to come from outraged 'ordinary citizens'.
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Once the debate over the nomination began, Sakharov was granted the floor before the other opponents and made an audacious denunciation of Lysenko and all he represented. He urged “all those present to vote so that the only yeas will be by those who, together with Nuzhdin, together with Lysenko, bear the responsibility for the infamous, painful pages in the development of Soviet science, the collapse of Soviet genetics, and the physical destruction of scientists, which fortunately are now coming to an end.” When he finished, he could hear Lysenko threaten him in typical fashion, loudly proclaiming that “people like Sakharov belong in prison.” Lysenko continued to interject himself into the debate, accusing Sakharov of “slander” and “creating a disgraceful scene.” There were twenty-nine candidates that day for full membership in the Academy, but only Nuzhdin was turned away on a vote of twenty-three in his favor and one hundred fourteen opposed, an overwhelming rejection.
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