Jewish father of Soviet bomb dies

MOSCOW, Dec. 22 (JTA) — Yuli Khariton, the father of the Soviet Union’s atomic bomb and a leading Soviet nuclear weapons researcher, has died at 92. In 1939, together with another prominent Soviet nuclear scientist, Yakov Zeldovich, he made calculations regarding nuclear fission that were crucial to the Soviet nuclear effort. A group of scientists that included Khariton and Zeldovich developed the first Soviet atomic bomb, which was tested in 1949. Khariton and Zeldovich were the only Jews in Soviet history to receive the Hero of Socialist Labor medal, the highest Soviet honor, three times.