Half life : the divided life of Bruno Pontecorvo, physicist or spy / Frank Close ; designed by Trish Wilkinson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Close, F. E., author.

Contributor:

Wilkinson, Trish, designer.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Pontekorvo, B. (Bruno), 1913-1993.

Pontekorvo, B.

Nuclear physicists--Soviet Union--Biography.

Nuclear physicists.

Nuclear physicists--Italy--Biography.

Spies--Soviet Union--Biography.

Spies.

Spies--Italy--Biography.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (401 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York, New York : Basic Books, 2015.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

It was at the height of the Cold War, in the summer of 1950, when Bruno Pontecorvo mysteriously vanished behind the Iron Curtain. Who was he, and what caused him to disappear? Was he simply a physicist, or also a spy and communist radical? A protégé of Enrico Fermi, Pontecorvo was one of the most promising nuclear physicists in the world. He spent years hunting for the Higgs boson of his day—the neutrino—a nearly massless particle thought to be essential to the process of particle decay. His work on the Manhattan Project helped to usher in the nuclear age, and confirmed his reputation as a brilliant physicist. Why, then, would he disappear as he stood on the cusp of true greatness, perhaps even the Nobel Prize? In Half-Life, physicist and historian Frank Close offers a heretofore untold history of Pontecorvo's life, based on unprecedented access to Pontecorvo's friends and family and the Russian scientists with whom he would later work. Close takes a microscope to Pontecorvo's life, combining a thorough biography of one of the most important scientsts of the twentieth century with the drama of Cold War espionage. With all the elements of a Cold War thriller—classified atomic research, an infamous double agent, a possible kidnapping by Soviet operatives—Half-Life is a history of nuclear physics at perhaps its most powerful: when it created the bomb.physics at perhaps its most powerful: when it created the bomb.

Contents:

Intro

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Preface

Prologue: Midway on Life's Journey

First Half

One: From Pisa to Rome

Two: Slow Neutrons and Fast Reactions: 1934-1936

Three: Paris and Politics: 1936-1940

Four: The First Escape: 1940

Five: Neutrons for Oil and War: 1940-1941

Six: East and West: 1941-1942

Seven: The Pile at Chalk River: 1943-1945

Eight: Physics in the Open: 1945-1948

Nine: Maneuvers: 1945-1950

Interlude

West to East

Half Time

Ten: Chain Reaction: 1949-1950

Eleven: From Abingdon-to Where? 1950

Twelve: The Dear Departed: 1950

Thirteen: The MI5 Letters

Second Half

Fourteen: In Dark Woods

Fifteen: Exile

Sixteen: Resurrection

Seventeen: Mr. Neutrino

Eighteen: Private Bruno

Afterlife

Nineteen: The Right Road Lost

Afterword

Acknowledgments

Acronyms

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-465-04487-5

OCLC:

902415066