On this day, October 9, 1975, Dr. Andrei Sakharov was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. Sakharov was a Russian nuclear physicist, dissident, and activist for disarmament, peace and human rights. Karsh photographed him in February, 1989, not long before Sakharov died of a heart attack the following December.

In December of 2016, this Karsh photograph of Sakharov from the same sitting was used as a large banner for an Andrei Sakharov Memorial Concert held in Kiev.