Nobel Prize-winning Russian physicist was a father of Soviet hydrogen bomb

The Associated Press

MOSCOW — Vitaly Ginzburg, a Nobel Prize-winning Russian physicist and one of the fathers of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, died in Moscow. He was 93.

Mr. Ginzburg died late Sunday of cardiac arrest, the Russian Academy of Sciences said Monday.

Mr. Ginzburg won the 2003 Nobel Prize in physics with two other scientists for their contribution to theories on superconductivity, the ability of some materials to conduct electricity without resistance.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Mr. Ginzburg was a key member of the group working under Igor Tamm that developed the Soviet hydrogen bomb. Mr. Ginzburg wrote that he and Andrei Sakharov formulated the two ideas that made it possible to build the device.

Mr. Ginzburg wrote several groundbreaking studies in various fields — such as quantum theory, astrophysics, radio-astronomy and diffusion of cosmic radiation in Earth’s atmosphere — that were of "Nobel Prize caliber," said Gennady Mesyats, the director of the Lebedev Physics Institute in Moscow, where Mr. Ginzburg worked.

A confirmed atheist despite his Jewish heritage, he was outspoken against anti-Semitism and firm in supporting the state of Israel.

This report includes material from the Los Angeles Times.

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