Kurchatov disagreed. Research toward a uranium weapon seemed too far removed from the immediate necessities of war. But the Soviet government in the meantime had assembled an advisory committee that included Kapitza and the senior Academician Abram Joffe, Kurchatov’s mentor. The committee endorsed atomic bomb research and recommended Kurchatov to head it. Somewhat reluctantly he accepted. “So it was that from early 1943 on,” writes his colleague A. P. Alexandrov, “work on this difficult problem was resumed in Moscow under the leadership of Igor Kurchatov.
