Andrei Sakharov: quarks and the structure of matter

In 1980, the Cold War was in full bloom. The Soviet father of the hydrogen bomb and Nobel Peace Laureate turned dissident physicist, Andrei Sakharov, had been exiled to Gorki by the Soviet authorities. Called senile and under heavy Soviet censorship, Sakharov had a hard time communicating with the outside world. Around this time, the author, Harry Lipkin, came into contact with Sakharov's scientific work. What followed was a remarkable adventure in which both scientists fought the Soviet censors, smuggling postcards and manuscripts into and out of the Soviet Union while trying to further scientific progress. Against a backdrop of politics, suppression, and genius, Andrei Sakharov, Quarks and the Structure of Matter details the search for the basic building blocks of matter, the path to understanding the forces that bind them together, and how scientific knowledge is learned, communicated and passed from one group of investigators to another.