scope:

This book gives an account of the creative work of theorists at the largest Soviet secret laboratory, now the Russian Federal Nuclear Center at Arzamas-16, and concrete situations where some famous results on the essentials of theoretical physics emerged, so to speak, in the intermissions of the quest for bombs. The collection contains about 30 papers with brief comments. Some of them have received international recognition. But few people can conceive where they were written, since the publication of a paper by a secret physicist in a Soviet journal was supported by fictitious affiliations. Other papers are less well known, particularly because Soviet journals were not always translated into European languages. However, pioneer results contained in them merit more attention.