Valery Legasov

Valery Alekseyevich Legasov (Russian: Валерий Алексеевич Легасов; 1 September 1936 – 27 April 1988) was a Soviet inorganic chemist and a member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. He is primarily known for his efforts to contain the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Legasov also presented the findings of an investigation to the International Atomic Energy Agency at the United Nations Office at Vienna, detailing the actions and circumstances that led to the explosion of Reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

Early life

Valery Alekseyevich Legasov was born on 1 September 1936 in Tula, Russian SFSR, into a family of civil workers. He attended secondary school in Kursk. In 1949–1954, he attended School No. 56 in Moscow and graduated with a gold medal. While he was a shy student, he excelled in both academic work and social activities being elected secretary of his school's Komsomol committee. During 1953, he proposed several reforms to the Komsomol committee to address what he perceived as indifference and passivity of its members. These ideas were quickly quashed by the authorities. His headmaster observed that Legasov "is a grown up man, a future statesman, a talented organizer. He can be a philosopher, а historian, an engineer..." The school now bears his name, and his bronze bust stands at the entrance. For two years he worked as a released secretary of the Central Committee of the Komsomol, he was elected to the bureau of the Soviet District Committee of the Komsomol and to the Moscow City Committee of the Komsomol. In 1961, he graduated from the Faculty of Physicochemical Engineering at the Mendeleev Moscow Institute of Chemistry and Technology, where he learned how nuclear fuel is processed, handled and disposed of.