Nuclear Museum Logo
Nuclear Museum Logo

National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

Viktor Adamsky

PhysicistRussia

ScientistSoviet Atomic Bomb Program

Viktor Adamsky was a Soviet physicist.

After graduating from Moscow University in 1950, Adamsky was assigned to Sarov (also known as Arzamus – 16), a secret closed city, where he worked in the theoretical department.  Adamsky lived alongside other scientists such as Igor Tamm, Yuri Romanov, and Andrei Sakharov. As Adamsky described it, “There was enthusiasm. We worked well. We felt we were doing our duty. It was very interesting physics.”

Adamsky worked on the Soviet hydrogen bomb project. He helped design and was present for the Tsar Bomba test, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated. His detailed account of the Tsar Bomba test can be read here.

Related Profiles

David Holcomb

Oak Ridge, TN

David Holcomb is nuclear engineer who specializes in instrumentation and controls for the molten salt reactors at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).

Percy Spencer

Cambridge, MA

Percy Spencer was an American physicist and inventor. Spencer was born in 1894 in Howland, Maine. He dropped out of grammar school at age 12 to work as a spindle boy in a weaving mill, but in his early years he taught himself about electricity, even setting up a new electrical system at a local […]

Joseph G. Hamilton

University of California, Berkeley

Joseph Gilbert “Joe” Hamilton (1907-1957) was a physician who directed biomedical research at the Berkeley site of the Manhattan Project.

James Tuck

Los Alamos, NM

James Leslie Tuck was a British physicist and a member of the British Mission to Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project.