Scientists tend to have a strong belief in making knowledge available to all. Think of Diderot and d’Alembert’s encyclopedia of trade secrets, or of Linux. Even toward the end of the Manhattan Project, as it became clear that the U.S. was going to shut out its allies from ongoing atomic research, there was a strong sense among many of the project’s scientists that one nation alone should not hold such power. Niels Bohr, following the detonation of the atomic bombs, pushed for the science to be available internationally (but for the materials to be closely guarded). When the physicist Joseph Rotblat believed that the Germans were no longer pursuing an atomic bomb, he quit the Manhattan Project. Rotblat later co-founded the Pugwash Conferences, gatherings of scientists and political leaders aimed at peaceful resolutions to conflicts and the elimination of weapons of mass destruction; this work won him a Nobel Peace Prize. Other Manhattan Project scientists more straightforwardly shared the information, by working as spies.
I wanted to learn more about the history of scientists who were spies, so I called up the physicist Frank Close. He’s written two nonfiction books about scientist spies: “Trinity: The Treachery and Pursuit of the Most Dangerous Spy in History” and “Half-Life: The Divided Life of Bruno Pontecorvo, Physicist or Spy.” (Close has also written, rather enviably, “Nothing: A Very Short Introduction.”)
“Trinity” is about Klaus Fuchs. The subtitle belies the relatively sympathetic tone of the book, which Close said he aimed to write “as a scientist, not as a spy-chaser or commentator.” The reader meets Fuchs as a young man in Germany who is beaten up by fascist thugs because of his family’s politics. His sympathies for the Communist Party are formed when the Communists are the only group to run candidates against the Nazis in 1933. As a German refugee, Fuchs is interned first on the Isle of Man and later near Montreal. Fuchs is a gifted mathematician and physicist, studying even while interned, and he eventually works for and makes significant contributions to British atomic research and to the Manhattan Project, all while sharing vital information with the Soviet Union. The British intelligence agency M.I.5 investigated Fuchs for alleged communist activity, but claimed that it found nothing incriminating. According to Close, the agency dismissed the allegations because they had come from the Gestapo. Close said, “I imagine him hearing Winston Churchill on the radio at the time the non-aggression pact between Russia and the Nazis broke down, and Churchill saying that the Russians are now our allies and we will do everything we can to help them. And now, by total chance, Fuchs happens to find himself at the heart of a project that could define the nature of warfare.” On account of Fuchs, Stalin knew about the atomic bomb before Harry Truman did; President Franklin Roosevelt had thought the project too important a secret to share with his Vice-President.