The Institute of Plasma Physics of the ASCR has produced a book, Controlled Thermonuclear Fusion for Everybody, which covers the story of the human struggle to achieve controlled thermonuclear fusion on Earth. The book is “reader-friendly” in that special attention has been given to plain vocabulary and rich illustration. The topic is introduced with a detailed chronology of fusion history. The contribution of Oleg Lavrentyev, a pioneer of the Soviet fusion program, is recognized since he is credited as being the first to call attention to fusion in correspondence with his government in 1949 and 1950. These letters aroused the interest of physicists Igor Tamm and Andrei Sakharov who launched a fusion program that resulted in the creation of Tokamak, a device which uses a magnetic field to confine plasma in the shape of a torus (doughnut).
Česky
