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ArcheoBiblioBase: Archives in Russia: H-116

Last update of repository: 16 December 2010

Memorial'nyi dom-muzei I.V. Kurchatova


Holdings

Total: 1 fonds, 4 collections, over 25,000 units, 1903–1960 (scattered documents—1880–1995)

The museum has collected documents relating to the life, work and public activity of the nuclear physicist Igor Vasil'evich Kurchatov.
        The documentation pertaining to his work as a nuclear physicist consists of his own scientific writings, reviews, and work notes recorded in diaries and correspondence. There are documents showing his connections with various academic organizations and illustrating his activities as a member of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and as a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Documents highlight his duties as a deputy and as organizer and participant in international conferences on problems of nuclear physics, including test-ban conferences. There is extensive scientific and personal correspondence of Kurchatov with scientists abroad, with academic and ministerial institutes in the Soviet Union, and with publishers and editors.
        The museum retains biographical documentation on Kurchatov and his relatives, including his personnel questionnaires and application forms, his autobiography, and other personal documents.
        Documents relating to Kurchatov include articles, memoirs and recollections about him, and material written to perpetuate his memory. These include contributions by Academicians A.P. Aleksandrov, G.N. Flerov, I.K. Kikoin, Iu.B. Khariton, and N.S. Khlopkin, V.I. Mostovoi, and Ia.B. Zel'dovich; by Minister of Medium Machine Building E.P. Slavskii, and Minister of Armaments B.L. Vannikov; as well as by his wife, his relatives, scientific colleagues and associates, and one of his personal security guards, D.S. Pereverzev, who during the1970s was the museum curator.
        There are separate collections of documents relating to his brother, B.V. Kurchatov, his wife, M.D. Kurchatova, to the scientists A.P. Aleksandrov, E.K. Zavoiskii, I.K. Kikoin, and the director of atomic affairs in the 1940s through 1980s,E.P. Slavskii. There are also documents relating to the management of the house in which Kurchatov lived in Moscow and his dacha in the Crimea.
        The museum has a large photograph archive. This comprises rare photographs taken at the end of the nineteenth century and negatives of a more recent period showing Kurchatov's personal life–pictures of his friends and colleagues, and of his daily surroundings and workplace. Other rare photographs show the first instruments and equipment that he and other scientists like K.D. Sinel'nikov built themselves for experimental work during the 1930s. There are collected photographs of many atomic scientists.
        The museum has film footage and newsreels of Kurchatov taken at work, at rest, and on his travels around the country and to England. Many reminiscences about Kurchatov have been recorded by the museum staff on videocassettes, including his assistants and colleagues A.P. Aleksandrov, I.N. Golovin, V.V. Goncharov, Iu.B. Khariton, and E.P. Slavskii, among many others.
        The sound collection contains recordings of prominent scientists and recollections of contemporaries. There are synchronic recordings of Kurchatov's speeches at Party Congresses and sessions of the USSR Supreme Soviet.

N.B. Many of the Kurchatov papers and other documentation related to the Kurchatov Institute are held in the Institute itself (seeE–81).


ABB ArcheoBiblioBase Archeo Biblio Base Patricia Kennedy Grimsted