L.A. Artsimovich

L.A. Artsimovich was Head of the Nuclear Fusion programme in the Soviet Union. He was working in the fields of nuclear fusion and plasma physics. At the time of the Conference he was professor at Moscow university and council member of the russian academy of sciences. His contribution to the Conference, "Research into Controlled Thermonuclear Reaction in the Soviet Union"

Excerpt:

"The trend towards a lessening of the rigid bounds of secrecy that had earlier so fully isolated physicists working on this problem in the different countries from one another was important in speeding up scientific investigation. As long as the dominant doctrine in this field was that the danger of publishing one's scientific results cannot be balanced by the advantage to be gained through scientific information from abroad, research languished. A significant change occurred in 1956, when certain results of work done in the USSR were disclosed for the first time. This was followed by the gradual emergence of publications from England and the USA. It was then possible to begin some sort of an exchange of ideas and experience—a thing of incalculable value in attacking such a scientific and technical enigma as is the problem of controlled thermonuclear reactions. In spite of the wide range of the investigations for controlled thermonuclear reactions, all of them are still in the stage of exploring various approaches to the problem. Not a single one of these approaches has been explored to such an extent as to permit one to say that success is assured. Apparently there is only one conviction that seems to be generally accepted, and that is that the solution of the problem must follow from a correct choice of the technique of magnetic confinement (thermoinsulation) for practical realization of the general idea of confining hot plasma by strong magnetic fields."

View his paper: "Research into Controlled Thermonuclear Reaction in the Soviet Union"