Dr. Kuchment was a small child when Nazi Germany invaded Ukraine, and he and his mother were forced to evacuate to Uzbekistan. As they were fleeing, their truck convoy came under heavy bombardment, but they escaped.
Dr. Kuchment earned his undergraduate degree in physics and math from the Odessa L.L. Mechnikov National University and his PhD in Newtonian cosmology from the Institute for the History of Science and Technology of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He worked as an assistant professor of physics at the Moscow State University of Technology “Stankin”. He published essays and book reviews in large Soviet magazines and newspapers such as Novyi Mir (New World) and Literaturnaya Gazeta (Literary Newspaper).
In 1973 he, his wife and daughter applied for immigration and arrived in Boston in the spring of 1975. From 1975 to 1976, he was affiliated with Columbia University’s Harriman Institute. Beginning in 1976, he was a fellow at what was then the Harvard Russian Research Center where, in the 1980s, he received a grant from the National Council for Soviet and East European Research. The project was called “Soviet Science and Technology: Eyewitness Accounts.” During multiple interviews with Soviet scientists who had emigrated to the United States, he made a big discovery about American spies, Joel Barr and Alfred Sarant. They were known associates of Julius Rosenberg but had disappeared in 1950. Kuchment discovered that they had run away through Mexico to the Soviet Union and were living there under assumed names and working for the Soviet military. The story was widely covered, including in The New York Times, and he published articles about them in “Physics Today” and “Problems of Eastern Europe”. He led seminars at Harvard University and taught political science at Boston University, Emanuel College, Brandeis University, Boston College, and at the Military Academy in Huntsville, Alabama.
Left to cherish his memory are his wife, Valeria; his daughter, Anna and her husband Mark Lamster of Dallas, TX; and his granddaughter, Eliza Lamster. Funeral Services will be private.
Arrangements under the direction of Stanetsky Memorial Chapel, www.stanetskybrookline.com.
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