About the contribution of the first magnitude mathematicians to the soviet atomic project

The contribution to the mathematical support of the Soviet Atomic Project of 1948-1955 by Academicians M.V. Keldysh and S.L. Sobolev, Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences A.N. Tikhonov, as well as Professor L.V. Kantorovich is presented. Under the leadership of Sobolev (calculation bureau of the special laboratory of the atomic nucleus at the Academy of Sciences), in order to obtain uranium-235 on an industrial scale, a theory of the stable functioning of the complex of cascades was developed and its calculation was carried out. Under the supervision of Keldysh (calculation bureau of the Institute of Mathematics of the Academy of Sciences), computational and theoretical work was carried out on thermonuclear bombs “puff” and “pipe”. Under the leadership of Tikhonov (calculation bureau of the Geophysical Institute), a direct calculation of an atomic explosion (plutonium and uranium balls), as well as a hydrogen bomb, was carried out based on the equations of gas dynamics with radiant heat conduction, the birth and transfer of neutrons. In the calculation group of Kantorovich (bureau of the Leningrad branch of the Institute of Mathematics of the Academy of Sciences), the critical masses of the plutonium bomb charge were initially calculated. Later, this group created a model of the Compton effect in the explosion of a thermonuclear bomb “pipe”, taking into account the anisotropy, and performed its calculation.