Half-Life: The Divided Life of Bruno Pontecorvo, Physicist or Spy

401 Pages·2015·1.859 MB·English

by  Frank Close

H A L F - L I F E
THE DIVIDED LIFE OF
BRUNO PONTECORVO,
PHYSICIST
OR SPY
F R A N K C L O S E
HALF-LIFE
ALSO BY FRANK CLOSE
The Infinity Puzzle
Neutrino
Nothing
Antimatter
The Cosmic Onion
HALF-LIFE
The Divided Life of
Bruno Pontecorvo, Physicist or Spy
FRANK CLOSE
A MEMBER OF THE PERSEUS BOOKS GROUP
New York
Copyright © 2015 by Frank Close
Published by Basic Books
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
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Designed by Trish Wilkinson
Set in 11 point Minion Pro
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Close, F. E.
Half life : the divided life of Bruno Pontecorvo, physicist or spy / Frank Close.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-465-06998-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-465-04487-0 (ebook)
1. Pontecorvo, B. (Bruno), 1913–1993. 2. Nuclear physicists—Soviet Union—
Biography. 3. Nuclear physicists—Italy—Biography. 4. Spies—Soviet Union—
Biography. 5. Spies—Italy—Biography. I. Title.
QC774.P66C56 2014
530.092—dc23
[B] 2014041019
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Abingdonians, present and past

Contents
Preface ix
Prologue: Midway on Life’s Journey xi
FIRST HALF
ONE From Pisa to Rome 3
TWO Slow Neutrons and Fast Reactions:
1934–1936 12
THREE Paris and Politics: 1936–1940 28
FOUR The First Escape: 1940 53
FIVE Neutrons for Oil and War: 1940–1941 66
SIX East and West: 1941–1942 77
SEVEN The Pile at Chalk River: 1943–1945 87
EIGHT Physics in the Open: 1945–1948 105
NINE Maneuvers: 1945–1950 117
INTERLUDE
West to East 127
HALF TIME
TEN Chain Reaction: 1949–1950 147
ELEVEN From Abingdon—to Where? 1950 160
TWELVE The Dear Departed: 1950 180
THIRTEEN The MI5 Letters 200
vii
viii Contents
SECOND HALF
FOURTEEN In Dark Woods 213
FIFTEEN Exile 225
SIXTEEN Resurrection 243
SEVENTEEN Mr. Neutrino 253
EIGHTEEN Private Bruno 275
AFTERLIFE
NINETEEN The Right Road Lost 299
Afterword 307
Acknowledgments 315
Acronyms 318
Notes 319
Bibliography 363
Index 367
Preface
“Did MI5 get back to you after I forwarded them your letter?”
When I started to research the life of Bruno Pontecorvo, the nuclear
physicist who disappeared through the Iron Curtain at the height of the
Cold War in 1950, I didn’t anticipate receiving such an inquiry, let alone
replying in the affirmative. Nevertheless, my correspondence with the
British intelligence agency led me to solve a sixty-year-old enigma: Why
did Pontecorvo flee so suddenly, just a few months after the conviction of
his colleague, atomic spy Klaus Fuchs? The obvious answer—that Ponte-
corvo was “the second deadliest spy in history,” as the US Congress later
described him—has hung around for decades, but no proof that he passed
atomic secrets to the Soviets has ever been presented, nor has there been
any suggestion of the information he might have disclosed. Contrary to
popular wisdom, neither the FBI nor MI5 ever located evidence against
him. So if Bruno Pontecorvo was a spy, he was most successful. Ponte-
corvo, a communist who had managed to evade detection and join the
Manhattan Project, always insisted that he fled for idealistic reasons, hav-
ing felt persecuted following Fuchs’s arrest.
Bruno Pontecorvo’s passage through the Iron Curtain split his life into
two almost-equal halves. This chronological split defined his scientific life:
great insights at the end of the first half were frustrated by his move to the
Soviet Union and may have cost him his share of a Nobel Prize. His person-
ality was also divided into two complementary halves. On one hand there
was Bruno Pontecorvo, the extroverted, highly visible, brilliant scientist,
ix