Oleg Alexandrovich Lavrentiev (Ukrainian: Лаврентьєв Олег Олександрович; (1926-07-07)July 7, 1926 – (2011-02-10)February 10, 2011[1]) was a physicist who worked on the Soviet atomic bomb project and whose research contributions were fundamental to the understanding of thermonuclear fusion.

In a guarded room dedicated to him, he wrote his first article, which he sent in July 1950 via secret mail to the department of heavy equipment engineering of the Central Committee.

Makhnev, and a few days later - to the Kremlin to the chairman of an ad hoc committee on atomic and hydrogen weapons, Lavrentiy Beria.

(Laboratory of instrumentation of the USSR, currently - Kurchatov Institute), where research was carried out on high temperature plasma physics classified as top-secret.

There was already ongoing testing and development of Andrei Sakharov's and Igor Tamm's ideas for the fusion reactor.

In the spring of 1956 Lavrentiev was sent to Kharkiv Theoretical Physics School (KIPT, Kharkov, USSR), and presented his report on the theory of electromagnetic traps to the director of the Institute Cyril Sinelnikov.

In August 2001, the journal "Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk" (Advances in physics science) published Lavrentiev's biography; his proposal that was mailed from Sakhalin, July 29, 1950; the review by Sakharov, and Beria's orders, which were kept in the Archives of the Russian Federation President designated as secret.