Spycraft 101 - Episode #195 - Physicist or Soviet Spy - The Enigma of Bruno Pontecorvo with Dr Frank Close

Spycraft 101 Jun 1, 2025 Spycraft 101 Podcast Playlist Podcast Episode #195 - Physicist or Soviet Spy? The Enigma of Bruno Pontecorvo with Dr. Frank Close Bruno Pontecorvo was one of the most talented nuclear physicists of the first half of the 20th Century, and possibly a Soviet spy as well. Bruno studied under legendary scientist Enrico Fermi in the 1930s. He was one of the earliest pioneers in the field and made many valuable contributions alongside his fellow physicists. As war loomed in Europe, Bruno escaped across France, eventually settling with his family in Oklahoma in the US, where he went to work for the oil industry. Bruno’s novel methods for locating oil deposits using a neutron-emitting device made him incredibly useful to the industry. In 1943, Bruno was invited to work at a nuclear reactor in Canada, at the Chalk River site. The reactor was part of the highly secretive Anglo-Canadian portion of the Tube Alloys project, where Bruno’s work contributed towards development in generating nuclear power. After the war he went to work at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in Harwell, UK, further developing nuclear power capabilities just as the Cold War began. Then suddenly, on September 1st, 1950, in the middle of a family vacation in Italy, Bruno and his family flew in secret to Finland and then crossed the border into the Soviet Union. Because of the vacation, it was weeks before his absence was noted at work, after which British MI5 began an investigation. Since the 1930s, Bruno had been a devoted albeit low-profile communist idealogue. Had he been a Soviet spy for years already? If so, what could he have given them? And how were the signs missed all along? The Pontecorvo family remained in the Soviet Union permanently, where Bruno worked at the Dubna nuclear research facility through the 1980s. Near the end of his life, Bruno gave an interview in which he stated, “I was a cretin” [for defecting to the USSR]. For episode 195 of the Spycraft 101 podcast I spoke with Dr. Frank Close, professor emeritus of nuclear physics at Oxford University and author of Half-Life: The Divided Life of Bruno Pontecorvo, Physicist or Spy. We discussed Bruno’s life, his disappearance, and the enduring mystery of whether he was a Soviet spy all along. Get Frank’s book here: “Half Life: The Divided Life of Bruno Potecorvo, Physicist and Spy Paperback“ – September 3, 2015 by Frank Close (Author) The Ultimate Spycraft and Espionage Reading List: Find the Spycraft 101 book series here: Website: Note from Quad Romb: Book at VK here - Original from here: