In 1950, as the reality of Cold War was beginning to sink in to an exhausted post-war Britain, scientists at Harwell in Oxfordshire were working on Britain’s nuclear programme. Its scientists along with American allies had proved the devastating practical application of atomic research five years earlier in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 1950, one of its most brilliant researchers, Bruno Ponticorvo left his Abingdon home with his family ostensibly for a holiday in his native Italy and then vanished completely only to reappear five years later in Moscow.

Frank Close is a celebrated physicist himself and a resident of Abingdon and has long taken a keen interest in the case. Was Ponticorvo a spy? He weighs the evidence, chases down ‘lost’ MI5 documents, speaks to friends and family and concludes that it is the likeliest explanation.

But he does much more than this in a book that explains to the layman the principles behind building a nuclear bomb at a time when the atomic nucleus was not fully understood. He retells the story of the quest to get heavy water - a key component of nuclear reactors - out of French laboratories after the country’s fall to the Nazis. He looks at Ponticorvo’s research in the United States and in England for which his contemporaries built on his insights to win Nobel prizes while on the other side of the Iron Curtain, Ponticorvo did his science under close Soviet guard.

Close has a rare ability among science writers to contextualise the research within the wider political realities it was taking place - and his sleuthing clearly comes as a result of persistence and old fashioned shoe-leather reporting. It makes for an excellent read.

A well-researched book on someone who at first glance seems to be a historical sidelight, but whom the author believes (with evidence) could have been a Nobel prize winner, had he not defected to the Soviet Union.

The mystery that the book traces is whether Bruno Pontecorvo ever have nuclear secrets to the Soviets before he defected. The answer is, there's no firm reference, though there is a circumstantial case.

What I liked most about this book was how it integrated history and science, and it showed a side of the development of nuclear technology that is left out of most American accounts. They tend to focus on events on US soil like Fermi's Chicago pile and the Manhattan Project. However, as Close's book illustrates, the first cousin reactor would probably have been in Europe were it not for the advance of fascism. The importance of Canadian and British science, too, is highlighted here.

One thing I'm inclined to disagree with Close about is Oleg Gordievsky's assessment of Pontecorvo. Despite not being able to provide hard evidence, Gordievsky's high rank in the KGB should give his statements considerable weight.

Bruno Pontecorvo was an important twentieth-century physicist, a student of Enrico Fermi, a member of the Manhattan Project, and central to neutrino research and the development of the Standard Model of particle physics. You might have two responses to this information. First, you might ask, “Standard Model? What is that?” In that case, this biography written by a physicist is not for you. The author assumes at least a passing familiarity with for quantum mechanics and particle physics. Second, you might ask, “Why I haven’t I heard of him?” or even, “Why didn’t he receive a Nobel Prize.” In this latter case, Half-Life by Frank Close is the book you’ve been looking for.

If you have an interest in the high-energy physics in the latter part of the twentieth century, and the cold war, this is the book for you.

For a complete review: http://1book42day.blogspot.com/2017/08/half-life-by-frank-close.html