The silent quake -- The training of a nuclear physicist -- Neutrons for peace and neutrons for war -- Under surveillance -- Ten million reasons to disappear -- Play it up or down? : confronting the Pontecorvo affair -- A political motive -- Bruno Maximovich and Professor Pontecorvo -- Conclusions: the noisy echo of secrecy
Summary
In the fall of 1950, newspapers around the world reported that the Italian-born nuclear physicist Bruno Pontecorvo and his family had mysteriously disappeared while returning to Britain from a holiday trip. Because Pontecorvo was known to be an expert working for the UK Atomic Energy Research Establishment, this raised immediate concern for the safety of atomic secrets, especially when it became known in the following months that he had defected to the Soviet Union. Was Pontecorvo a spy? Did he know and pass sensitive information about the bomb to Soviet experts? At the time, nuclear scientist
