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

by Close, Frank

  30. This is an anecdotal memory from a local source who wished to remain anonymous. If there is any written record, it has not been made public.

  31. Mafai, Il lungo freddo, p. 93.

  32. Sven-Olof Ekman interview, November 28, 2013.

  33. Letter from Bruno Pontecorvo to Marianne Nordblom, October 12, 1938, Bruno Pontecorvo files CAC.

  34. Letter from Bruno Pontecorvo to Marianne Nordblom, October 13, 1938, CAC.

  35. Letter from Bruno Pontecorvo to Marianne Nordblom, October 15, 1938, CAC.

  36. Quoted in obituary, The Guardian, October 14, 2006.

  37. Stable relative to beta decay. The paper is “On the Possible Existence of Beta-Stable Isomers” [in French], presented at Actes du Congrès International du Palais de la Dècouverte, Paris, 1937 (listed in Bruno Pontecorvo bibliography at http://pontecorvo.jinr.ru/bibliography.html). At these same proceedings, George Placzek suggested that nuclear levels may be grouped into individual classes that do not intercombine—see note in Bruno Pontecorvo, “Isomeric Forms of Radio Rhodium,” Nature 141, no. 3574 (April 30, 1938): 785.

  38. Bruno Pontecorvo and M. Dode, “On a Radioelement Produced in Cadmium under the Action of Fast Neutrons” [in French], Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences 207, no. 4 (1938): 287–293.

  39. The distribution of these photons in space is related to the difference in angular momentum of the original isomer and the state into which it decays. Technically, this is called their angular distribution, or multipolarity.

  40. Bruno Pontecorvo, “Isomeric Forms of Radio Rhodium,” Nature 141, no. 3574 (April 30, 1938): 785.

  41. A minibiography of the Joliot-Curies, which mentions the work at Ivry, can be found at http://www.analytik.ethz.ch/praktika/radiochemie/unterlagen/biografien/Joliot-Curie.pdf.

  42. Bruno Pontecorvo and A. Lazard, “Isometric Nuclei Produced by Continuous X-ray Spectra” [in French], Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences 208, no. 2 (1939): 99–101.

  43. Bruno Pontecorvo, Autobiographical notes.

  44. The isomers actually have slightly different masses, but the difference is too small to be measured directly, hence the sobriquet isomer, for what appeared to be “equal masses.” Each rung on the energy ladder has a slightly different energy, and by the mass-energy equivalence, this implies a different mass. However, the difference in their masses is equivalent to one part in several thousand. It is this nugatory difference that enables photons to be emitted as the isomers tumble down the energy ladder.

  45. Lew Kowarski interview, AIP, http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4717_1.html.

  46. Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, p. 50, note 5. Rhodes, Dark Sun, p. 27 contains the letter sent to Abram Ioffe, with whom Kurchatov began experiments. The KGB double agent Oleg Gordievsky claimed to me on April 30, 2013, that the KGB used Pontecorvo as an agent during this period in Paris. This seems unlikely. Pontecorvo was peripheral to the fission research, unlike Joliot-Curie, who had already told Kurchatov about the phenomenon. None of this work was secret at first.

  47. He repeated the test with rings of various sizes and verified that the intensity of radiation was less for large rings than for small ones, and that with the largest ring there was no radioactivity at all. This confirmed that the radiation was indeed the result of the uranium and not some other source.

  48. Pinault, “Frédéric Joliot, la science et la société,” p. 152; Michel Pinault e-mail, January 21, 2014.

  49. Letter from Bruno Pontecorvo to Marianne Nordblom, January 27, 1939, CAC. The mention of Ivry is confusing. The fission demonstration was made at the Collège de France; it seems unlikely that Bruno would choose to refer to his own work in such splendid terms at that very moment. Later, on March 27, he unambiguously refers to the fission work in another letter to Marianne.

  50. Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, p. 290.

  51. The idea of a chain reaction originated with Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard in 1934. He had not foreseen that uranium would be key, and mistakenly thought that a light element such as beryllium would do. He shared his insight with Rutherford. The concept was thus in the open. The story is told in many books, e.g., Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, p. 28 and Farmelo, Churchill’s Bomb, p. 73 et seq.

  52. Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, p. 57.

  53. Manham, Snake Dance, p. 189, which appears to be based on René Brion and Jean-Louis Moreau, De la mine à Mars: la genèse d’Umicore (Brussels: Lannoo, 2004).

  54. Letter from Bruno Pontecorvo to Marianne Nordblom, February 1939, CAC.

  55. Letter from Bruno Pontecorvo to Marianne Nordblom, June 26, 1939, CAC.

  56. Legal document signed by Bruno Pontecorvo, CAC.

  57. Ludo Pontecorvo interview, April 18, 2013.

  58. Guy Liddell diaries, TNA KV 4/472.

  59. Sven-Olof Ekman e-mail, May 15, 2013, and copy of FBI file on Bruno Pontecorvo.

  60. Letter from Bruno Pontecorvo to Marianne Nordblom, CAC.

  61. Guido Pontecorvo to MI5, January 12, 1951, TNA KV 2/1888.

  62. Mafai, Il lungo freddo, p. 186.

  63. Weart, Scientists in Power, p. 114.

  64. Lew Kowarski interview, AIP, http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4717_1.html.

  65. Lew Kowarski interview, AIP, http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4717_1.html.

  66. The fact that we are not in the presence of naturally occurring atomic explosives is the result of a delicate balance. In Russia, Yakov Zel’dovitch and Yuli Khariton calculated that if the amount of U-235 were slightly higher (about twenty rather than seven in every thousand atoms), a chain reaction could happen as long as the neutrons had been slowed (moderated) with water. Their calculations were correct, except for one thing: they assumed water to be a much more efficient moderator than it is in practice.

  67. Lew Kowarski interview, AIP, http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4717_1.html.

  68. Quote from vetting report dated July 6, 1940, TNA KV 2/1888, memo 117B. This was also noted by Ronnie Reed in his report of 1951. See also Turchetti, The Pontecorvo Affair, p. 71.

  CHAPTER 4

  1. Weart, Scientists in Power, p. 153.

  2. Mafai, Il lungo freddo, p. 105.

  3. Turchetti, The Pontecorvo Affair, p. 44.

  4. Segrè, A Mind Always in Motion, p. 160.

  5. Eugenio Tabet interview, September 12, 2013.

  6. Bruno Pontecorvo files, CAC.

  7. Bruno Pontecorvo files, CAC.

  8. See Némirovsky, Suite Française; confirmed by Météo France.

  9. Mafai, Il lungo freddo, p. 106.

  10. Lew Kowarski interview, AIP, http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4717_1.

  11. See Némirovsky, Suite Française, p. 4.

  12. Mafai, Il lungo freddo, p. 105.

  13. Sonia Tomara, New York Herald Tribune, June 14, 1940, http://spartacus-educational.com/2WWtomara.htm.

  14. Mafai has this as Muftar, which doesn’t exist and appears to be Bruno’s phonetic memory of Mouffetard fifty years later.

  15. Mafai, Il lungo freddo, p. 106.

  16. Mafai, Il lungo freddo, p. 107.

  17. Sonia Tomara, New York Herald Tribune, June 14, 1940, http://spartacus-educational.com/2WWtomara.htm.

  18. The card in the Churchill College archives was written in French; the translation is mine. Bruno and Gillo later told Mafai that they left Paris early on the morning of June 13, which is as I have written here. The card was written on June 14. The distances traveled are consistent with two days of traveling by bicycle, and their memory of a June 13 departure.

  19. Details of Luria’s Nobel Prize are at http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1969/luria-bio.html.

  20. Lew Kowarski interview, AIP, http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4717_1.

  21. Bruno Pontecorvo passport visa, CAC.

  22. Bruno Pontecorvo passport visas, CAC. Marianne’s visa number is 1209087 and Gil’s is 1209090. Marianne is noted as Swedish, and Gil as Italian.

>   23. Mafai, Il lungo freddo, p. 110.

  24. Bruno Pontecorvo passport, CAC.

  25. Bruno Pontecorvo passport, CAC.

  26. Mafai, Il lungo freddo, p. 111.

  27. The bridge that spans the Narrows is known as the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. However, the waterway itself is simply called the Narrows, not the Verrazano Narrows, contrary to a common misconception.

  28. FBI/INS records of arrival number 65-5650 list the date as August 19, and the intended destination as the home of Paolo Pontecorvo at 503 W. 121 St. Mafai, Il lungo freddo, p. 112 has August 20. TNA KV 2/1888, memo 109A claims that Bruno entered the US on August 18, 1950. I have written the date as August 19, using the actual US entry forms as the primary documentary source. The reference to humidity obscuring the view originates with Bruno Pontecorvo as told to Mafai on the page referenced above. This is consistent with the weather data recorded at http://weatherspark.com/history/31081/1950/New-York-United-States.

  29. Gillo Pontecorvo obituary, The Guardian, October 14, 2006, http://www.theguardian.com/news/2006/oct/14/guardianobituaries.obituaries.

  30. Gillo Pontecorvo remarks in Pontecorvo family film, viewed September 12, 2013.

  CHAPTER 5

  1. Frisch and Peierls memorandum, quoted in Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, p. 324.

  2. Bureaucracy, politics, and the sheer scale of the challenge delayed action until late in 1941. See Farmelo, Churchill’s Bomb.

  3. The story of these experiments is found in Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, pp. 348–351.

  4. Sir John Cockcroft, “The Early Days of Canadian and British Atomic Energy Projects,” www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull040su/04004701820su.pdf.

  5. Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, p. 70.

  6. Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, p. 54.

  7. Kurchatov left his name off the paper, although he had inspired and overseen the experiment, so that the young duo could get the full credit. In 1960, Flerov became the director of the laboratory of nuclear reactions at JINR in Dubna. See also Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, p. 55.

  8. Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, p. 387, note 77.

  9. This independent discovery remained undisclosed for forty years. See Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, pp. 66–67 and note 98.

  10. H. York, quoted in Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, p. 327.

  11. L. Fermi, Atoms in the Family, p. 254.

  12. It’s not clear how sure Bruno Pontecorvo was that this job was guaranteed when he left Paris. Segrè had said at the time that he could “get you a job.” Segrè wrote to Pontecorvo again in August, by which time the latter was in the US, and urged him to “get there quickly.” It seems that there may have been some confusion, as another physicist, Sergio Benedetti, thought that he had also been offered the job. Comments at Bruno Pontecorvo centenary meeting, Rome, 2013.

  13. Mafai, Il lungo freddo, p. 115.

  14. On the order of an electron volt or less.

  15. E. Amaldi and E. Fermi, “On the Absorption and the Diffusion of Slow Neutrons,” Physical Review 50 (November 1936): 899.

  16. R. Fearon, W. Russell, and B. Pontecorvo, “Preliminary Field Experiment in Scattered Neutron Well Logging; 25 June 1941,” S. Scherbatskoy papers, box 1, folder 6, Smithsonian archives. Referenced in Turchetti, The Pontecorvo Affair, p. 45.

  17. Bruno Pontecorvo, “Neutron Well Logging,” Oil and Gas Journal 40 (1941): 32–33.

  18. Bruno Pontecorvo, “Radioactivity Analysis of Oil Well Samples,” Geophysics 7, no. 1 (1942): 90–92.

  19. Turchetti, The Pontecorvo Affair, p. 45.

  20. Mafai, Il lungo freddo, p. 115.

  21. Mafai, Il lungo freddo, p. 117.

  22. Mafai, Il lungo freddo, p. 115.

  23. L. Fermi, Atoms in the Family, p. 163.

  CHAPTER 6

  1. Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, p. 77.

  2. The separation was accomplished by gaseous diffusion. Fuchs’s Russian contact was with the GRU. After late 1943, when Fuchs moved to the United States, he operated with the NKGB (Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 314). See also note 3 in the “Interlude” chapter of the present book and p. ix of Andrew and Gordievsky for some guidance to the labyrinthine histories of the various Soviet security services

  3. See Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, p. 79 for more on Flerov’s efforts and the slow response of various authorities.

  4. This was in December 1941.

  5. James Chadwick interview, AIP, http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/3974_4.html. Farmelo, Churchill’s Bomb, p. 179.

  6. Via Fuchs and also possibly John Cairncross, secretary to the Minister without Portfolio, Lord Hankey, who received Chadwick’s report.

  7. See comments by Alan Nunn May in Broda, Scientist Spies, p. 111 et seq. The ICI patents are discussed in Weart, Scientists in Power, pp. 171–181.

  8. Broda, Scientist Spies, p. 122.

  9. Turchetti, The Pontecorvo Affair, p. 47, note 28.

  10. L. Fermi, Atoms in the Family, p. 168.

  11. S. Scherbatskoy papers, box 1, folder 6, Smithsonian archives; see Turchetti, The Pontecorvo Affair, p. 47, note 27.

  12. Harry Lipkin e-mail, February 18, 2011.

  13. The name was changed to Eldorado Mining and Refining Limited.

  14. For more information about Boris Pregel, see Turchetti, The Pontecorvo Affair, p. 57 or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Pregel.

  15. Letter from Boris Pregel to Bruno Pontecorvo, November 24, 1942, CAC.

  16. Bertrand Goldschmidt, quoted in Weart, Scientists in Power, p. 196.

  17. Bruno Pontecorvo, Autobiographical notes.

  18. TNA KV 2/1888.

  19. Mafai, Il lungo freddo, p. 130.

  CHAPTER 7

  1. Turchetti, The Pontecorvo Affair, p. 52.

  2. TNA KV 2/1887.

  3. Gowing, Britain and Atomic Energy, p. 277.

  4. TNA AB 1/361.

  5. TNA KV 4/242, memo 23a, dated October 23, 1950.

  6. TNA KV 2/1888.

  7. TNA KV 4/243.

  8. The report was “lost” for seven years, and only reappeared in 1950. This visit by the FBI seemed inconsequential at the time, but would later prove central to Bruno’s sudden decision to flee to the USSR in 1950—see Chapter 13.

  9. Burke, The Spy Who Came In from the Co-op, p. 132.

  10. Burke, The Spy Who Came In from the Co-op. The claim that “Chalk River was penetrated by Soviet agents” is also asserted by Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive, p. 174.

  11. Weather history for January 1943 can be found at http://www.weather-warehouse.com/WeatherHistory/PastWeatherData_TulsaIntlArpt_Tulsa_OK_January.html.

  12. Wallace, “Atomic Energy in Canada,” p. 126. (I am indebted to J. D. Jackson for this source.)

  13. Wallace, “Atomic Energy in Canada,” p. 127.

  14. These arguments occurred between Sir John Anderson of the British War Cabinet, and Vannevar Bush, head of the US Office of Research and Development. The USORD oversaw the Manhattan Project, of which General Groves was the director.

  15. See Farmelo, Churchill’s Bomb, especially pp. 211–223. Also, John Angus’s first name and status per email from Archive Sources, University of Glasgow, September 25, 2014.

  16. Broda, Scientist Spies, chap. 12.

  17. This has been well documented in descriptions of life at Los Alamos, so there is no reason to doubt that it was the case in Chicago also. At Los Alamos, the research director, J. Robert Oppenheimer, lobbied against the policy. His colleagues supported him. He organized weekly colloquiums where technical staff from the entire project discussed their ideas freely. Overall, the personnel at Los Alamos shared information in ways that horrified General Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project.

  18. Goldschmidt, Les rivalités atomiques, p. 44, quoted in Weart, Scientists in Power, p. 198. See also Gowing, Britain and Atomic Energy, p. 160; Broda, Scientist Spies, p. 125.

  19. Broda, Scientist Spies, p. 108.
>
  20. Gibbs, “British and American Counter-Intelligence.”

  21. Quoted in Broda, Scientist Spies, p. 115.

  22. Broda, Scientist Spies, p. 126.

  23. Broda, Scientist Spies, p. 126.

  24. Broda, Scientist Spies, p. 113.

  25. Broda, Scientist Spies, p. 124.

  26. Presumably, the Germans were under so much pressure that the threat of a German invasion of the UK—for which radar was the intended defense—was now greatly reduced. Also, with Hitler now on the defensive, there was fear that he might develop his own atomic bomb and hold the Allies hostage in a last stand.

  27. Paul Broda interview, October 11, 2013.

  28. Broda, Scientist Spies, p. 131.

  29. Broda, Scientist Spies, p. 144.

  30. Sudoplatov et al., Special Tasks.

  31. Sudoplatov did not suggest that these major scientists were Soviet agents, only that they had leaked information to those who were. The possibility that Fermi “may have spoken indiscreetly on some occasion to his old pupil and colleague Bruno Pontecorvo is far from implausible” (anonymous analysis of Sudoplatov claims, June 16, 2003, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/929408/replies?c=191). This remark has some support from our Chapter 6, where Pontecorvo admits that data he had received from Fermi “had not been published, and cannot be published for a long time to come, because of their confidential character.” Sudoplatov misidentified the Soviet agent MLAD as Pontecorvo, whereas this was in fact Ted Hall. Hall was not publicized as an atomic spy until the appearance of Bombshell in 1997. Sudoplatov’s claims were made before 1994, and he may have included disinformation to protect Hall. An exchange of opinions between Jerrold and Leona Schecter (Sudoplatov’s coauthors on Special Tasks) and Thomas Powers on Sudoplatov’s more extreme claims appeared in the New York Review of Books in September 1994 (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1994/sep/22/were-the-atom-scientists-spies-an-exchange/). This exchange references a denial by John Cairncross that he transmitted news of the Tube Alloys project to the Soviets; Cairncross attributes this leak to Donald Maclean.

  32. Remarks by Gillo Pontecorvo as reported by Guido Pontecorvo to MI5, January 1951, TNA KV 2/1888.