Passion or Profession: Nuclear Physicist

Period: 1921–1989

Born to a physicist father, Sakharov also became a physicist and went on to help the Soviet Union develop its first hydrogen bomb. However, he was an advocate of nuclear arms reduction and a human rights activist. He and his wife were internally exiled for a time because of their activism. In the end, it was his work for human rights rather than his physics accomplishments that earned him a Nobel Prize—for peace instead of physics.