Picture taken on October 7, 2003 shows Russian Nobel Physics Prize laureate, professor Vitaly Ginzburg
Russian physicist and Nobel laureate Vitaly Ginzburg has died in Moscow. He was 93.

The Russian Academy of Sciences says Ginzburg died Sunday evening from heart failure after a long illness.

During the 1940s and early 50s, Ginzburg was part of a Soviet project that developed the hydrogen bomb. In numerous interviews, he said he believed his work saved him from the Stalinist purges that began in the mid-1930s. As he worked during those years, he noted that many of his Jewish contemporaries, including his second wife, were forced into labor camps.

Ginzburg shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2003 for his contribution to the theory of superconductors -- the ability of some materials to conduct electricity without resistance at very low temperatures.

Ginzburg, an atheist of Jewish descent, remained active in public life after the collapse of the Soviet Union and became a sharp critic of the growing role of the Russian Orthodox Church in state affairs.

In 2007, he was one of several scientists who signed a protest letter to former president Vladimir Putin warning of the Church's growing influence and denouncing attempts to introduce religious lessons into schools.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.