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Physicist. Defector. Spy? Pontecorvo, Physicist Or Spy Frank Close a Closer Look at the Enigmatic Life of Bruno Pontecorvo Basic Books, 2015

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Physicist. Defector. Spy? Pontecorvo, Physicist Or Spy Frank Close a Closer Look at the Enigmatic Life of Bruno Pontecorvo Basic Books, 2015 SCIENCE LIVES Half-Life The Divided Life of Bruno Physicist. Defector. Spy? Pontecorvo, Physicist or Spy Frank Close A closer look at the enigmatic life of Bruno Pontecorvo Basic Books, 2015. 398 pp. By Alex Wellerstein come in contact in my scientific career” (2). Despite the lack of definitive proof, Close Displaced from Italy during World War ultimately concludes that Pontecorvo was, n late July of 1950, the physicist Bruno II, Pontecorvo found employment in Eu- in all likelihood, some kind of spy, citing Pontecorvo and his family left the rope and North America, working with the the fact that someone gave the Soviets the United Kingdom to take a relaxing, physicist Frédéric Joliot-Curie in France, blueprints for the NRX reactor and offer- well-deserved vacation through France, helping to develop a novel means of oil ing reasons to exclude other, known spies. Switzerland, and Italy. All seemed well— prospecting in the United States, and con- Pontecorvo himself was conspicuously quiet until suddenly, it didn’t. On 24 August, tributing to the design of the NRX heavy- about the topic, even when he was allowed IPontecorvo missed an arranged meeting water reactor in Montreal as part of the to speak publicly. Although it is not possible with his parents and the next day sent a Anglo-Canadian portion of the Manhattan to say for certain whether Pontecorvo com- strange, contradictory telegram that made Project. He made major contributions to mitted explicit acts of espionage, Close has little sense to them. Instead of returning to the study of neutrinos, and their possible found some evidence that he was probably England, the Pontecorvos took a flight to detection, among other work. Close argues of value to the Soviets, in particular with re- Sweden, paid for with a large sum of Ameri- that he could have been one of the great sci- gard to prospecting (the Soviets were low on can currency, and then traveled to Helsinki. entists of the 20th century—had he not fled uranium reserves) and reactor shielding. From there, they vanished without a mes- to the USSR, where his work and personal As for the timing of Pontecorvo’s defec- sage or a trace. It would be 5 years before life were strongly constrained. tion, Close makes a plausible case that Kim the world learned where they had gone: the There is no concrete evidence that Philby—a high-ranking member of the British Soviet Union. Pontecorvo was ever a clandestine Soviet intelligence agency MI6 and double agent— on December 4, 2015 Pontecorvo’s defection has long been agent. At most, it has been established that may have interpreted some vague inquiries mentioned in the same breath as known So- he had long been a card-carrying Com- from the FBI as evidence that Pontecorvo was viet spies including Klaus Fuchs, Alan Nunn munist who had joined the party immedi- about to be outed as a Soviet spy. In reality, May, and Kim Philby. And yet, there is still ately after the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression the FBI had almost nothing on Pontecorvo, considerable ambiguity about whether he Pact was established—a sign of a true be- but Philby would not have known that. Close was, in fact, a spy. Until recently, the litera- liever. He does not appear in any decrypted speculates that someone got in touch with ture on this has been remarkably thin, con- documents or messages in the U.S. counter- Pontecorvo midvacation, and, fearing immi- sisting mainly of unsubstantiated claims intelligence “Venona Project,” and no other nent arrest, he made the decision to defect. by intelligence officers (both Soviet and spies ever persuasively named him as a Given his convictions about communism, it www.sciencemag.org Anglo-American). collaborator. (Some memoirs of ex-KGB is possible that he could have been convinced Published in 2012, Simone Turchetti’s members have lumped him in with other to defect even if he hadn’t yet committed any The Pontecorvo Affair was the first major spies, but these have a feeling of unreli- acts of espionage. academic study of Pontecorvo and focused ability about them. In one, his code name In the end, Close argues that if Pontecorvo primarily on the reaction of British and is listed as MLAD, but we now know defini- was a spy, he paid dearly for it. On arrival, he American authorities to his defection (1). tively that this was a different scientist spy, found himself under house arrest, not even Frank Close’s Half-Life is more of a general Theodore Hall.) able to be referred to by his true name (he Downloaded from biography of Pontecorvo, one simultaneously was known only as “the professor” for years). personal, political, and scientific. Close, a His scientific work suffered, and even after physicist and historian, has taken full advan- In 1950, a brilliant he was allowed to reveal his location, his tage of the work of Turchetti and pushed it Italian scientist travel (and that of his family) was harshly into some further, deeper areas as well, an- defected to the constricted, and he found that his old col- choring the narrative in archival discoveries, Soviet Union. But leagues in the West regarded him icily. personal connections, and interviews. was he a spy? Pontecorvo’s mystery and tragic arc bring Bruno Pontecorvo was the youngest to mind several protagonists from the nov- member of the Italian physicist Enrico els of John le Carré. Like Pontecorvo, le Fermi’s famous “Via Panisperna Boys,” Carré’s spies have nothing of James Bond to whose experiments in the 1930s served as them, are riddled with all-too-human char- the foundation for many of the advances in acter flaws, and always inadvertently seal nuclear physics that eventually led to the their own melancholic fates. development of the atomic bomb. Fermi REFERENCES was not generally heavy on praise, but he 1. S. Turchetti, The Pontecorvo Affair (University of Chicago, once described Pontecorvo as “scientifically Chicago, 2012). one of the brightest men with whom I have 2. Enrico Fermi to Brien McMahon (13 March 1951), National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, RG 128, Unclassified The reviewer is at the College of Arts and Letters, Stevens General Subjects, Box 316. Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA. E-mail: PHOTO: DUNCAN1890/ISTOCKPHOTO.COM PHOTO: [email protected] 10.1126/science.aaa3654 SCIENCE sciencemag.org 20 FEBRUARY 2015 • VOL 347 ISSUE 6224 833 Published by AAAS.
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