Yang Zhenning's comment on Zhou Guangzhao: He made China detonate its first atomic bomb one or two years earlier
2024-08-18
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A reporter from The Paper learned from relevant departments that Academician Zhou Guangzhao, former vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, former president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and winner of the "Two Bombs and One Satellite Medal of Merit", died in Beijing on August 17, 2024 at the age of 95 due to illness.
Academician Zhou Guangzhao Visual China data map
Zhou Guangzhao's life was closely linked to my country's nuclear weapons research.
According to a report in Science and Technology Daily in December 2021, in 1957, Zhou Guangzhao went to work at the Joint Institute in Dubna, the Soviet Union, where he mainly engaged in particle physics research. He achieved fruitful results and soon grew into one of the most outstanding researchers in the institute.
In the late 1950s, Sino-Soviet relations broke down. Upon hearing that the Soviet Union had withdrawn its experts, Zhou Guangzhao and other Chinese scientists working in the Soviet Union were outraged and expressed their willingness to return to China immediately to participate in atomic bomb research. "As a generation of scientists trained by the new China, we are willing to give up the basic theoretical research work we have been engaged in for many years and switch to work tasks that the country urgently needs. We are ready to obey the call of the motherland at any time!"
In 1961, Zhou Guangzhao boarded a train heading south to return to China. After arriving in Beijing, he was assigned to work at the Beijing Institute of the Second Ministry of Machine Building. As deputy director of the Theoretical Department, he assisted Deng Jiaxian in breaking through the principles of the atomic bomb and led the theoretical design of the atomic bomb, starting a 19-year "secret work."
Late in the night of October 15, 1964, less than 24 hours before the scheduled time for China's first atomic bomb to explode, an urgent telegram from the Lop Nur Test Plant raised doubts about the design of the atomic bomb. The superiors hoped that Zhou Guangzhao and others in charge of theoretical physics research on nuclear weapons would make a serious estimate - what is the probability of China's first atomic bomb successfully detonating?
Zhou Guangzhao and his colleagues worked hard all night, and the next morning, they sent a jointly signed report to Premier Zhou Enlai's desk. The report said that according to calculations, the probability of China's first atomic bomb explosion being successful was more than 99%. Except for some uncontrollable factors, there would be no problems with the detonation of the atomic bomb.
This report was a reassurance before the atomic bomb exploded. It was because of this report that Premier Zhou Enlai formally approved the detonation of China's first atomic bomb at 15:00 on October 16. On the afternoon of October 16, the atomic bomb exploded successfully in Lop Nur, and China entered the ranks of nuclear-weapon states.
Yang Zhenning once said: "Brother Guangzhao's return enabled China to explode its first atomic bomb in 1964 one or two years earlier than expected."
The Paper reporter Yue Huairang
(This article is from The Paper. For more original information, please download the "The Paper" APP)
