Physicist and human rights defender, from 1987 and until now (July 2013) - Chief Researcher in the Theoretical Physics Department of the P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences. Chair of the Board of the “Right of the Child” (ROC), Member of the Moscow Helsinki Group, and of two calls (2010-2011 and 2012-2015) of the Civic Chamber of Russian Federation according to two President Medvedev’s Decrees. Expert of Ombudsman for Human Rights of Russia. In 2009 Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia awarded Boris Altshuler the Title «Man of the Year 5769 - for the many years human rights advocacy and humanitarian actions in favor of children»

In October 2013 Boris Altshuler was granted the American Physical Society’s 2014 Andrei Sakharov Prize “For the life-long struggle for democracy in Russia and for his advocacy on behalf of the rights of neglected children”. Boris Altshuler shared this honor with young physicist Omid Kakabee who is imprisoned in Iran.

Boris Altshuler is a member of the Council of Ministry of Education on Protection of Rights of Orphaned Children (Ministry of Education Order from 26.08.2013 № 984) and a member of the Interdepartmental Working Group on Drafting of the Conception of State Family Policy of Russian Federation (Ministry of Labor and Social Protection Order from 23.08.2013 № 379.

About myself:

Born 16 August 1939 in Moscow, where I has been living practically all my life with the exception of 9 school years in 1947-1956 spent in the Town of Sarov (Soviet Nuclear Centre “Arzamas-16”) where my father Lev Altshuler (1913-2003) worked as a member of  pioneer team of scientists designing Soviet nuclear bombs. They were good friends with Andrei Sakharov and I inherited this friendship beginning from 1968. During 20 years we cooperated with Sakharov in physics and in human rights advocacy. He was a completely unique personality – see e.g. my Memorial Reports about him in 2009 ( «Andrei Sakharov as a physicist in all facets of his life» - Download .pdf) and in May 2011 at the Session in Academy of Sciences dedicated to his 90 years («Andrei Sakharov today: lasting impact on science and society» - Download .doc).
 
My mother - Mariya Speranskaya (1916-1977), her ancestors amazingly rooted in the Russian noblemen of XII century. More about my father’s and mother’s pedigree (in Russian), and also my remembering about young years in the town of Sarov  (in Russian), Article “Three friends…”  (in English - .pdf) dedicated to 90 years of Vitalyi Ginzburg - my father’s all-life friend and Nobel Awardee in Physics, and plenty documentary about Soviet atomic project etc. one can read in the book “Lev Altshuler’s Extremal States” (FizMatLit, 2011) which I compiled in cooperation with my father’s pupil Academician Vladimir Fortov recently elected President of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

51 years ago, in 1962, I married Larissa Miller who gradually became a renown Russian poet and who courageously endured "adventures" with the KGB in the 1980s which were the result of my human rights involvements (see her Interview of 2009). We have two sons. My main hobby is to compile my wife’s books and to post her everyday blog “Poems in Single File”.

Besides children’s rights activity I chair the non-formal NGO “Movement without Frontiers” (we helped hundreds of Jewish refuzeniks in the epoch of Big Aliyah from Russia in 1989-1995) and I am a co-author of the Web-site “Haverim” (“Friend” – in Hebrew) which motto is: “Russia and Israel are historically ‘doomed’ to friendship and cooperation”.

And I take a chance to express the gratitude to the US Committee of Concerned Scientists and to some personal friends in Russia and USA whose donations helped us now to create ROC’s new web-site.

Boris Altshuler
+7-903-709-35-49    
baltshuler@yandex.ru
 
Some references:

29.01.14 - Russian Winner of Sakharov Prize Writes Urging President Putin to Help Kokabee: Boris Altshuler, physicist and chairman of the NGO “Right of the Child”, who won the 2013 Sakharov human rights prize together with Omid Kokabee, addressed a letter to President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation, suggesting that he appeal to Dr. Hassan Rouhani, President of Iran, requesting Omid Kokabee’s release from prison so that the latter can pursue his studies at the University of Texas.

20.02.2013, ‘Christian Science Monitor’

Boris Altshuler:
"This is a terrible tragedy, and it would be good to see an impartial investigation," says Boris Altschuler, head of the independent Center for Children's Rights in Moscow.
"But the Duma deputies, Pavel Astakhov, and the others are also engaging in a form of child abuse by politicizing this issue the way they are.... They are sacrificing the chances for thousands of Russian orphans for hardhearted political reasons. It's just dirty politics."

19.02.2013, Boris Altshuler, interview to Roza Tsvetkova
"Every orphan is unique"

See more in the web-site chapter “Some News and Publications”.

In Russian:

05.04.2013. “Moscow News”, Interview to Boris Pasternak – about ‘Russian Orphan Industry’, Pavel Astakhov, Andrei Sakharov, etc.

10.01.2013. “Vesti-Okna”, Israel, Interview to Elena Birgauz:
“Jew, but not according to Halacha” - Download .pdf

40 publications of 2010-2013 on the childhood and family problems at the Civic Chamber web-site: OPRF.

16 publications at the Radio “Echo of Moscow”.