Trinity-Peierls, Klaus Fuchs, and how the security services caught the most dangerous spy in history

Описание: "Trinity - Rudolf Peierls, Klaus Fuchs, and how the security services caught the most dangerous spy in history"

Professor Frank Close, OBE FRS, University of Oxford

This event took place and was recorded on 1 November 2024 at the Martin Wood Lecture Theatre, Department of Physics, University of Oxford.
Professor Stephen Blundell hosted and moderated this event.

Abstract: Trinity was the codename for the test explosion of the atomic bomb in New Mexico on 16 July 1945. Frank Close tells the story of the bomb's metaphorical father, Rudolf Peierls (who was Professor here in Oxford from 1963 to his retirement in 1974); his intellectual son, the atomic spy Klaus Fuchs who worked with him in Birmingham and Los Alamos and continued spying post war from Harwell; and the ghosts of the security services in Britain, the USA and USSR. Frank will reveal new insights from MI5 files in the National Archives, and documents of the FBI and KGB. He has also overthrown a misconception lasting 60 years that J Edgar Hoover was central to Fuchs' exposure: the real hero was probably GCHQ.

Professor Close has written many books, and if you enjoyed this talk you may consider his book
'Trinity
The Treachery and Pursuit of the Most Dangerous Spy in History'
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/30581... (note the Department of Physics has no affiliation with Penguin or the selling of this book).

All copyright Department of Physics Oxford and/or Professor Frank Close. If you'd like to share ANY part of this talk, please seek written authorization from us.