Author: Paul Ratner / Source: Big Think
- Physicist Yuri Orlov fought for human rights during the Cold War.
- He was arrested by the KGB and exiled to Siberia.
- Orlov’s story can inspire scientists to fight for their beliefs.
The midterm elections saw 9 new scientists elected to Congress, a positive trend in the anti-science climate supported by the White House.
Scientists are prepared to fight. They can take some inspiration from Yuri Orlov.An accelerator physicist suddenly acquired viral fame as a tweet about him highlighted a very unusual personal story. Coming upon the resume of the Cornell physics Professor Emeritus Yuri Orlov, another physicist by the name of David Kelliher pointed out that Orlov spent a significant amount of time in a KGB prison camp, enduring exile to Siberia, and deportation.
How did a Cornell Professor end up in a notorious KGB labor camp? Born in 1924, Orlov is a renowned human rights champion and dissident of the Soviet era. While he spent World War II as a factory worker making tanks and a Red Army artillery officer, his strong convictions made him unable to keep quiet during the oppressive years of the Communist regime that followed.
Wow, this accelerator physicist’s CV is something else https://t.co/bHC04qgwhk pic.twitter.com/5N4gAsL4zG
— davidkelliher (@davidkelliher)
In the early 1970s, he was one of the founding members of the Soviet branch of Amnesty International, as states his Cornell bio. He wrote an infamous “Letter to Brezhnev” which defended the dissident nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov and criticized the powers that be, demanding economic and political reforms, including glasnost. That letter got him fired from his research position and blacklisted – he was never again able to work as a scientist in the Soviet Union.
In 1976, Orlov…
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