Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-xxrs7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T08:39:33.480Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Atomic secrets and governmental lies: nuclear science, politics and security in the Pontecorvo case

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2004

SIMONE TURCHETTI
Affiliation:
Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM), University of Manchester, Mathematics Building, Oxford Road, M139PL, Manchester, UK.

Abstract

This paper focuses on the defection of nuclear physicist Bruno Pontecorvo from Britain to the USSR in 1950 in an attempt to understand how government and intelligence services assess threats deriving from the unwanted spread of secret scientific information. It questions whether contingent agendas play a role in these assessments, as new evidence suggests that this is exactly what happened in the Pontecorvo case. British diplomatic personnel involved in negotiations with their US counterparts considered playing down the case. Meanwhile, the press decided to play it up, claiming that Pontecorvo was an atom spy. Finally, the British secret services had evidence showing that this was a fabrication, but they did not disclose it. If all these manipulations served various purposes, then they certainly were not aimed at assessing if there was a threat and what this threat really was.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2003 British Society for the History of Science

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Winner, BSHS Singer Prize (2002).
I would like to thank Jeff Hughes and Jon Agar for advice and criticism. I am grateful also to the CHSTM staff and students for support and exchange of ideas. I am indebted to the archivists at the PRO (especially Stephen Twigge) and at the Churchill College Archive Centre for their help. Finally I am most grateful to the Laboratorio Scienza Epistemologia e Ricerca (LASER). This paper is based on a research project funded by the CHSTM and the ESRC jointly.