The First War of Physics (76 page)

LIST OF KEY CHARACTERS

Abelson, Philip Hauge.
American physicist. Verified nuclear fission in 1939 and co-discovered neptunium in 1940.

Acheson, Dean Gooderham.
American politician. Secretary of State in the Truman administration from 1949 to 1953. Co-author of the Acheson–Lilienthal report.

Akers, Wallace Alan.
British chemist and industrialist. Appointed head of the British Tube Alloys project in 1941.

Alikhanov, Abram Isaakovich.
Soviet physicist. Organised the Soviet atomic project’s Laboratory No. 3 which was founded in 1945.

Allier, Jacques.
French banker and agent of the Deuxième Bureau, French military intelligence. Salvaged quantities of heavy water from Norway and Nazi-occupied France in 1940.

Allison, Samuel King.
American physicist. Headed the ‘Cowpuncher’ Committee in the run up to the Trinity test.

Altshuler, Lev Vladimirovich.
Soviet physicist. Developed pulsed X-ray radiography with Veniamin Tsukerman and worked on implosion at Arzamas-16.

Alvarez, Luis Walter.
American physicist. Joined the Met Lab in 1943 before moving to Los Alamos in 1944. Won the 1968 Nobel prize for physics.

Anami, Korechika.
Japanese Imperial Army general and Army Minister.

Anderson, Herbert.
American physicist. Worked on the first experimental nuclear reactor in Chicago.

Anderson, John.
British politician. Minister in Winston Churchill’s wartime cabinet responsible for the UK atomic energy programme.

Angelov, Pavel.
Soviet diplomat and GRU spy. Worked at the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa. Reactivated Alan Nunn May in 1945.

Apresyan, Stepan.
Soviet diplomat and NKGB station chief in New York.

Ardenne, Manfred von.
German physicist and inventor. Secured funding for nuclear research from the Reich Postal Ministry. Relocated to Moscow in May 1945.

Arnold, Henry.
Security officer at the UK’s Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell.

Artsimovich, Lev Andreyevich.
Soviet physicist. Worked on electromagnetic isotope separation.

Bacher, Robert.
American physicist. Headed the Los Alamos G Division in 1944.

Bagge, Erich Rudolf.
German physicist. Former student of Werner Heisenberg. Founding member of the Uranverein. Worked on isotope separation. Captured by the Alsos mission and detained at Farm Hall.

Baruch, Bernard Mannes.
American financier. Led the US delegation to the UN Atomic Energy Commission in 1946.

Bainbridge, Kenneth Tompkins.
American physicist. Directed the Trinity test.

Bentley, Elizabeth Terrill.
Vassar graduate and NKVD spy. Defected in 1945, uncovering two major spy networks.

Berg, Morris ‘Moe’.
American Major League Baseball player and later an OSS spy. Part of the AZUSA mission. Visited Zurich in 1944 with instructions to assassinate Werner Heisenberg.

Beria, Lavrenty Pavlovich.
Soviet politician and head of the NKVD. Oversaw Soviet atomic espionage and chaired the Committee responsible for the Soviet atomic project. Executed in 1953.

Bethe, Hans Albrecht.
German émigré physicist. Headed the Los Alamos Theoretical Division. Won the Nobel prize for physics in 1967.

Beurton, Ruth (née Kuczynski).
GRU spy. Courier for Klaus Fuchs from 1942 until his departure for America with the British mission in late 1943.

Bevin, Ernest.
British Foreign Secretary in the Attlee government.

Blackett, Patrick Maynard Stuart.
British physicist. Served on the MAUD Committee 1940–41.

Bloch, Felix.
Swiss physicist. Contributed to Oppenheimer’s summer study group at Berkeley. Joined Los Alamos but left shortly afterwards.

Blunt, Anthony Frederick.
British art historian and Soviet spy. One of the Cambridge spy ‘ring’.

Bohm, David Joseph.
American physicist. Worked on electromagnetic separation at the Rad Lab. Left America following his trial in 1951.

Bohr, Aage Niels.
Danish physicist. Son of Niels Bohr. Won the Nobel prize for physics in 1975.

Bohr, Erik.
Danish chemical engineer. Son of Niels Bohr

Bohr, Harald August.
Danish mathematician and footballer. Brother of Niels Bohr.

Bohr, Niels Henrik David.
Danish physicist and Nobel laureate. Elucidated the origin of nuclear fission in uranium. Joined the British Tube Alloys delegation following his escape from Nazi-occupied Copenhagen. Worked to pre-empt nuclear weapons proliferation.

Borden, William Liscum.
American lawyer and executive director of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. Summarised the evidence gathered by the FBI and concluded that J. Robert Oppenheimer was ‘more probably than not’ a Soviet spy.

Born, Max.
German émigré physicist. Worked with Klaus Fuchs in Edinburgh.

Bothe, Walther Wilhelm Georg.
German physicist. Founder member of the Uranverein. Studied the properties of nuclear materials and built Germany’s first cyclotron.

Bradbury, Norris Edwin.
American physicist. Succeeded J. Robert Oppenheimer as director of the Los Alamos laboratory in 1945.

Briggs, Lyman James.
American engineer and administrator. Director of the US National Bureau of Standards. Chaired the Uranium Committee from its inception in 1939 to 1941.

Brothman, Abraham.
American industrialist and Soviet spy.

Brun, Jomar.
Norwegian chemist. Directed operations at the Norsk Hydro heavy water plant at Vemork. Carried out acts of sabotage before fleeing to Sweden in 1940. Planned subsequent commando raids on the plant with Lief Tronstad.

Burgess, Guy Francis De Money.
British civil servant and Soviet spy. Part of the Cambridge spy ‘ring’.

Burt, Leonard.
British police officer. Involved in the cases of both Alan Nunn May and Klaus Fuchs.

Bush, Vannevar.
American engineer and administrator. Directed the NDRC and OSRD, which controlled the Manhattan Project.

Byrnes, James Francis.
American politician. Secretary of State in the Truman administration from 1945–47.

Caimcross, John.
British civil servant and Soviet spy. Secretary to Lord Hankey in 1941. Passed notes of the meeting signalling Britain’s decision to build an atomic bomb to Moscow in September 1941.

Chadwick, James.
British physicist and Nobel laureate. Joined the MAUD Committee in 1940 and the Manhattan Project as part of the Tube Alloys delegation in late 1943. Knighted in 1945.

Chambers, Whittaker.
American journalist and
Time
editor. Acted as a Soviet courier. Testified against Alger Hiss in 1948.

Chevalier, Haakon Maurice.
Translator, author and professor of French literature at Berkeley. Close friend of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Sponsored the notorious ‘Chevalier incident’ in 1942–43.

Clarke, Carter.
Chief of the Special Branch of the US Army’s Military Intelligence Division. Initiated project to decrypt Soviet messages in 1943.

Clusius, Klaus.
German chemist. Co-inventor (with Gerhard Dickel) of the Clusius–Dickel thermal diffusion technique used to separate isotopes. Worked on isotope separation as part of the Uranverein.