The First War of Physics (78 page)

Kowarski, Lew.
French physicist of Russian-Polish descent. Worked in Frédéric Joliot-Curie’s research team in Paris. Escaped to Britain with Hans von Halban following the German occupation. Subsequently worked at the Montreal laboratory and supervised construction of Canada’s first nuclear reactor at Chalk River.

Kremer, Simon.
Soviet diplomat and GRU spy. Secretary to the military attaché at the Soviet embassy in London. Acted as Klaus Fuchs’ Soviet controller in 1941–42.

Kuczynski, Jurgen.
German economist, historian and Soviet spy. Brother of Ruth Kuczynski, Klaus Fuchs’ Soviet controller in 1942–43.

Kurnakov, Sergei Nikolaevich.
Soviet journalist who wrote on military affairs for the
Daily Worker.
Former Tsarist cavalry officer.

Kurchatov, Boris Vasilyevich.
Soviet chemist. The first Soviet scientist to separate plutonium. Igor Kurchatov’s brother.

Kurchatov, Igor Vasilyevich.
Soviet physicist. Scientific head of the Soviet atomic project. Oversaw the first successful Soviet atomic bomb test in 1949.

Kvasnikov, Leonid Romanovich.
Soviet diplomat and NKVD spy. ‘XY’ station chief at the Soviet Embassy in New York charged with gathering intelligence on atomic energy.

Lamphere, Robert Joseph.
American FBI counter-intelligence agent. Worked as FBI liaison to the Venona project and pursued the leads revealed in the decrypts.

Lansdale, John, Jr.
American lawyer and Army G-2 counter-intelligence expert. Head of security on the Manhattan Project.

Laue, Max Theodor Felix von.
German physicist and Nobel laureate. Although a strong opponent to Nazism who had never contributed to the work of the Uranverein, he was nevertheless captured by the Alsos mission and detained at Farm Hall.

Lawrence, Ernest Orlando.
American physicist and Nobel laureate. Inventor of the cyclotron. Actively supported the establishment of the American bomb project. Worked on electromagnetic isotope separation.

LeMay, Curtis Emerson.
American military leader and politician. Commander of strategic air operations against Japan towards the end of the war. Took charge of the US Strategic Air Command in 1948.

Lewis, Robert Alvin.
Co-pilot aboard the
Enola Gay
B-29 Superfortress.

Lilienthal, David Eli.
American lawyer and public servant. Director of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Appointed to an advisory board on atomic energy in 1946. Co-author of the Acheson–Lilienthal report. Went on to become the first chairman of the US Atomic Energy Authority.

Lindemann, Frederick Alexander (Lord Cherwell).
German-born British physicist and scientific adviser to Winston Churchill.

Lomanitz, Giovanni Rossi.
American physicist. Worked on electromagnetic isotope separation at the Rad Lab before he was drafted in 1943.

Maclean, Donald Duart.
British diplomat and Soviet spy. One of the Cambridge spy ‘ring’. Appointed co-secretary of the Combined Policy Committee in Washington in 1947.

Makhnev, Vitaly A.
Soviet NKVD general. Headed the secretariat of the Special State Committee formed in 1945 to develop the Soviet atomic bomb.

Malenkov, Georgei Maximilianovich.
Soviet politician. Appointed to the Special State Committee formed in 1945 to develop the Soviet atomic bomb.

Marshall, George Catlett, Jr.
American military leader and politician. Served as Army Chief of Staff during the war. Replaced James Byrnes as Secretary of State in the Truman administration and set out an economic recovery programme for war-devastated Europe that came to be known as the Marshall Plan.

May, Alan Nunn.
British physicist and GRU spy. Worked as part of the Tube Alloys project before relocating to the Montreal laboratory in early 1943. Unmasked by the defection of Igor Gouzenko.

McCarthy, Joseph Raymond.
American politician. Republican Senator. Noted for his 1950 speech denouncing Communists in the State Department and his sponsoring of fervent anti-Communism (‘McCarthyism’).

McMahon, Brien.
American lawyer and politician. Author of the McMahon Bill and the US Atomic Energy Act, 1946.

McMillan, Edwin Mattison.
American physicist. Co-discovered neptunium in 1940, for which he shared the Nobel prize in chemistry in 1951 with Glenn Seaborg.

Meitner, Lise.
Austrian émigré physicist. Co-discovered the origin of nuclear fission in uranium with her nephew, Otto Frisch.

Menzies, Stewart Graham.
British head of the Secret Intelligence Service (also known as MI6).

Milch, Erhard.
German field marshal responsible for the development of the Luftwaffe and mass production of German ‘vengeance weapons’.

Møiler, Christian.
Danish physicist. Worked at Niels Bohr’s Institute for Theoretical Physics.

Molotov, Viacheslav Mikhailovich.
Soviet politician. First Deputy Chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers. Co-signatory of the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact. Supervised the early Soviet atomic programme.

Morrison, Philip.
American physicist. Joined the Manhattan Project in 1942.

Neddermeyer, Seth Henry.
American physicist. Suggested implosion as a means of creating a super-critical mass. Worked on implosion at Los Alamos until 1944.

Nelson, Stephen (aka Mesarosh, Stephen).
Croatian-born political activist and Soviet spy. Key figure in the American Communist Party, based in Oakland, California.

Neumann, John von.
Hungarian émigré mathematician. Worked on the design of explosive lenses required to produce symmetrical implosion in the Fat Man
bomb. Went on to become a Cold War ‘hawk’ and one of the models for Peter Sellers’ portrayal of Dr Stangelove.

Nichols, Kenneth David.
American engineer and aide to Manhattan Project head Leslie Groves. Subsequently became General Manager of the US Atomic Energy Commission.

Nier, Alfred Otto Carl.
American physicist. Worked on the fission properties of U-235.

Oliphant, Marcus ‘Mark’ Lawrence Elwin.
Australian physicist. Instrumental in drawing attention to the Frisch–Peierls proposals concerning critical mass for a uranium bomb and active participant on the MAUD Committee and Tube Alloys project. Joined the work on electromagnetic isotope separation at the Rab Lab in 1943.

Oppenheimer, Frank Friedman.
American physicist. Worked on preparations for the Trinity test. Brother of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer, Julius Robert.
American physicist. Scientific head of the Los Alamos laboratory and widely acknowledged as the ‘father of the atom bomb’. Chairman of the US Atomic Energy Authority’s General Advisory Committee. Campaigned for international control of atomic weapons. Lost his security clearance in 1954.

Ovakimyan, Gaik Badalovich.
Soviet NKVD station chief in New York, responsible for managing several spy rings. Exposed as a spy in 1941, he returned to Moscow to head the NKVD’s American desk.

Parsons, William Sterling ‘Deke’ or ‘Deak’.
American engineer, Navy captain and head of the Manhattan Project’s ordnance division. Oversaw delivery of the first atomic bombs to Tinian Island. Armed the Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Pash, Boris T.
American Army intelligence officer. Responsible for counter-intelligence for the Manhattan Project. Military head of the first and second Alsos missions.

Pauli, Wolfgang Ernst.
Austrian émigré physicist and Nobel laureate. Emigrated to America in 1940 and became a naturalised US citizen in 1946.

Pavlov, Vasily.
Soviet diplomat and NKVD spy. Operated the NKVD spy rings from the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa.

Peierls, Rudolf Ernst.
German émigré physicist. With Otto Frisch, co-authored the Frisch–Peierls memorandum on critical mass. Joined the British Tube Alloys delegation to the Manhattan Project in late 1943. Knighted in 1968.

Penney, William George.
British physicist. Joined the British Tube Alloys delegation to the Manhattan Project in late 1943. Returned to Britain in 1946 to become Chief Superintendent Armament Research at Fort Halstead in Kent and went on to build Britain’s first atomic bomb.

Perrin, Michael Willcox.
British chemist and industrialist. Patented the first industrial method for producing polyethylene in 1935. Joined Tube Alloys in 1940 to assist Wallace Akers.

Pervukhin, Mikhail Georgievich.
Soviet politician. People’s Commissar for the Chemical Industry.

Philby, Harold Adrian Russell ‘Kim’.
British intelligence officer and NKVD spy. One of the Cambridge spy ‘ring’. Held various positions in the SOE and SIS before becoming head of Section IX, responsible for Soviet counter-intelligence.

Phillips, Cecil J.
American cryptanalyst at the Army Signals Intelligence Service. Identified a pattern in coded Soviet messages which provided a crucial breakthrough.

Placzek, George.
Czech physicist. Joined the British Tube Alloys delegation and headed the Theoretical Division at the Montreal laboratory from 1943–45. Replaced Hans Bethe as head of the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos in 1945.

Planck, Erwin.
German politician. Son of Max Planck. Involved in the 20 July 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Subsequently executed.

Planck, Karl Ernst Ludwig Marx ‘Max’.
German physicist. Discovered the quantisation of energy in 1900 and remained an influential figure in German science through two world wars.

Pontecorvo, Bruno.
Italian physicist and Soviet spy. Worked in Enrico Fermi’s team in Rome. Joined the Montreal laboratory in 1943, where he worked on reactor design. Defected to the Soviet Union with his family in 1950.

Poulsson, Jens Anton.
Norwegian commando. Leader of the advance Grouse/Swallow party which parachuted onto the Hardanger Plateau in 1942. Supported the successful Gunnerside raid on the Vemork heavy water plant.

Rabi, Isidor Isaac.
Galician-born émigré physicist and Nobel laureate. Associate director of the MIT Radiation Laboratory, which worked on radar during the war. Served as a visiting consultant to Los Alamos and as a member of the US Atomic Energy Authority’s General Advisory Committee.

Reiche, Fritz.
German physicist. Carried Fritz Houtermans’ warning message to America.

Ribbentrop, Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von.
German Foreign Minister, 1938–45.

Riehl, Nikolaus.
Russian-born German industrial chemist. Worked on the production of uranium at the Auer company’s Oranienburg plant. Captured by the Soviets in 1945. Riehl contributed to the Soviet atomic programme for the next ten years.

Robb, Roger.
American lawyer. Prosecuting attorney in Oppenheimer’s security clearance hearing.

Rønneberg, Joachim Holmboe.
Norwegian commando. Led the successful Gunnerside raid on the Vemork heavy water plant.

Rosbaud, Paul.
Austrian chemist, editor of the scientific journal
Die Naturwissenschaften
, adviser to German publisher Springer Verlag and an agent for the British SIS. Helped Lise Meitner escape from Nazi Germany.

Rosenberg, Julius.
American engineer and Soviet spy. Acted as a courier and recruited a network of industrial spies, including his brother-in-law, Los Alamos machinist David Greenglass. Executed with his wife Ethel in 1953.

Rosenfeld, Léon.
Belgian physicist. Collaborated with Niels Bohr and worked at Bohr’s Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen.

Rotblat, Joseph.
Polish physicist. Worked with James Chadwick in Liverpool and joined the British delegation to the Manhattan Project in early 1944. Resigned from the project in 1945 when it became obvious that there was no threat from a Nazi weapon. A noted campaigner for nuclear disarmament, he became secretary general of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs and in 1995 won the Nobel peace prize.

Rozental, Stefan.
Polish physicist. Emigrated to Denmark in 1938 and became Niels Bohr’s personal assistant.

Sachs, Alexander.
American economist and banker. Delivered Einstein’s letter to US President Franklin Roosevelt in 1939.

Sakharov, Andrei Dmitrievich.
Soviet physicist. Led the development of the Soviet Union’s first thermonuclear weapons. Joined Arzamas-16 in 1950. Subsequently became a noted campaigner against nuclear weapons proliferation and civil rights activist. Won the 1975 Nobel peace prize.

Sato, Naotake.
Japanese diplomat. Ambassador to the Soviet Union.

Sax, Saville.
American teacher and Soviet spy. Friend of Theodore Hall. Acted as courier for Hall.

Scherrer, Paul.
Swiss physicist. Acted as an informant for both the British SIS and American OSS.

Schumann, Erich.
German physicist and administrator. Grandson of composer Robert Schumann. Worked for German Army Ordnance and supervised the German atomic programme from 1939 to 1942.

Seaborg, Glenn Theodore.
American chemist. Pioneer of nuclear chemistry. Developed chemical methods for separating plutonium and went on to discover and co-discover many new elements. Shared the 1951 Nobel prize in chemistry with Ed McMillan. Became chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission in 1961.

Segrè, Emilio Gino.
Italian émigré physicist. Worked in Enrico Fermi’s research team in Rome. Emigrated to America in 1938 and joined Ernest Lawrence’s team at the Rad Lab. Worked at Los Alamos on problems relating to spontaneous fission in U-235 and plutonium. Won the 1959 Nobel prize for physics.

Serber, Robert.
American physicist. Former student of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Worked on aspects of atomic weapons design at Los Alamos and was part of the scientific team that assembled the bombs on Tinian Island and prepared them for delivery. Author of the ‘Los Alamos Primer’.

Siegbahn, Karl Manne Georg.
Swedish physicist and Nobel laureate. Provided a research post and laboratory facilities to Lise Meitner following her escape from Germany.