Academic Research
Between 1931 and 1934 he worked in the Physical department of the Radium Institute (Leningrad) which was headed by Vitaly Khlopin where Kurchatov was researching as an senior scientist and took part in the creation of the Europe's first cyclotron (work was started in 1932, the cyclotron was completed in 1937). Then to 1943 he worked at the Ioffe Institute with Anatoly Petrovich Alexandrov. In that period (by November 1941) they devised a method of demagnetizing ships to protect them from German mines, which was in active use through the end of the World War II and afterwards. Kurchatov's laboratory separated from the Ioffe Institute and moved to Moscow in 1943 for the work on the Soviet atomic bomb project.
In 1932, George Gamow and Lev Mysovskii submitted a draft for consideration by the Academic Council of Radium Institute, which was approved by the Soviet government. Khlopin, under the guidance and direct participation of Igor Kurchatov, Lev Mysovskii and George Gamow, installed the Europe's first cyclotron particle accelerator . Installation was finished in 1937, and the research began to take place on 21 September 1939.
Kurchatov and his apprentice Georgy Flyorov discovered the basic ideas of the uranium chain reaction and the nuclear reactor concept in the 1939. In 1942 Kurchatov declared: "At breaking up of kernels in a kilogram of uranium, the energy released must be equal to the explosion of 20,000 tons of trotyl." This announcement was practically verified during the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
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