Fuchs, E
NAME: Fuchs, Emil Julius Klaus
ACHIEVEMENT(S): Arrested and convicted for giving vital American and British atomic research secrets to the Soviet Union.
NICKNAME/ALIAS: None.
DATE/PLACE OF BIRTH: 29th December 1911, at Russelsheim, Germany.
DATE/PLACE/AGE AT DEATH: 28th January 1988, in Dresden, Germany. Aged 76.
DISCIPLINE: Theoretical physicist.
FIELD: Physics.
LANGUAGE: German and English.
PARENTS: Emil Fuchs and Else Wagner.
SIBLINGS: Gerhardt, Elizabeth and Kristel.
SPOUSE: Margarete Keilson, married 1959.
CHILDREN: None.
EDUCATION: Eisenach Gymnasium, 1920-29; University of Leipzig, 1929-30;
University of Kiel, 1930-33; University of Bristol, 1934-37.
MAJOR WORK:
LIFE AND TIMES: Fuchs became a Communist while at Kiel University, during a time when the Nazis were growing to prominence in Germany and Adolf Hitler became Chancellor, soon afterwards using his emergency powers to ban Communist Party meetings. At Kiel, Hitler's Brownshirts took over the University, beating up many Communists including Fuchs.
In February 1933, after the Reichstag fire (which the Nazis blamed on the Communists) Fuchs was forced to hide out in Berlin before leaving the country. In August he arrived in England where he had family connections in Somerset, and began studying at the University of Bristol under the newly appointed head of the physics department, Nevill Mott.
In early 1934, Mott gave Fuchs the job of research assistant, working on the application of quantum mechanics as a method of explaining electrical resistance in the thin films of certain metals. For this work he received his Ph.D. in 1937.
Mott then recommended him for a research post with the great German physicist, <collaborated with> Born*, one of the pioneers of quantum mechanics, at Edinburgh University. He soon became a friend and collaborator with Born and they co-wrote two papers, 'The Statistical Mechanics of Condensing Systems' and 'On Fluctuations in Electromagnetic Radiation'. The collaboration enhanced Fuchs' professional standing and, in 1938, Edinburgh awarded him a Doctorate.
From June to December 1940, following the outbreak of World War II, he was interned with other German refugees in camps on the Isle of Man, and then in Canada. As a result of pressure from Born he was released and, in the spring of 1941, was recruited by another German refugee, Rudolf Peierls.
Peierls took him on to assist with work on ‘Tube Alloys’, the code name for the British project to develop the atomic bomb at the University of Birmingham. They were involved in two aspects of the project. They were to make theoretical calculations of nuclear fission reactions so as to calculate how much Uranium 235 would be needed for a bomb and then how to produce the material.
In June 1941 Germany attacked the Soviet Union, forcing the Russians onto the side of the Allies. Fuchs knew that his work was of great military significance and, keen to be an effective Communist, decided that atomic secrets should be shared with the new allies.
On a visit to London later that year, he got in touch with a member of the Soviet military attache staff, Simon Davidovitch Kremer, and was soon handing over copies of his scientific reports.
These reports showed that the creation of an explosion by atomic fission was possible, and Soviet physicists immediately got to work on atomic fission.
Fuchs was granted British citizenship in August 1942, when he signed the Official Secrets Act. In 1943, he was sent to the United States with Peierls to work on the Manhattan Project (the American atomic bomb program) in New York. In the summer of 1944, in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where he shared a house with Peierls and the physicist <shared accommodation with> Fermi*, Fuchs learned a great deal about the theory and design of the bomb.
He established new links with the Soviets through the spy Harry Gold and began to pass on secrets. He became silent and withdrawn, the physicist <knew> Teller* describing him as "taciturn to an almost pathological degree", but nobody suspected his treachery. His espionage is credited with saving the Soviets two years' work in their own programme to develop the bomb.
So detailed were the data passed over by Fuchs that, when the Soviet uranium diffusion plant was built at Podolsk, just south of Moscow, it was an exact copy of the American plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
In the summer of 1944, he handed over a virtual information-pack on the atomic bomb being built in Los Alamos. The pack contained descriptions, calculations, figures and even a scale drawing of what was then the most important and highly guarded location in the world.
Fuchs remained at Los Alamos until after the two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, in August 1945. The following year, he returned to England where, on 1st August, Sir John Cockcroft appointed him principal scientific officer in the theoretical physics division of the newly-created Atomic Energy Research centre at Harwell. Soon he became senior principal and, in 1949, deputy chief scientific officer, responsible for the mathematical work that underpinned the development of nuclear power.
His espionage activities were finally detected January 1950 and he was immediately arrested and confessed to passing information to the Soviet Union since 1941.
In February 1951 Fuchs was jailed for fourteen years in prison and his citizenship was revoked the following December. After nine years he was released for good behavior, left England and was granted citizenship in the German Democratic Republic, where he joined his father and one of his nephews. He was then taken on as Deputy Director of the Central Institute for Nuclear Research in Rossendorf, near Dresden.
He remained a committed Communist and was showered with honors by the East German Communist Party: elected to the Academy of Sciences and the Communist Party Central Committee, and was given the Order of Merit of the Fatherland, and the Order of Karl Marx.
Following his retirement in 1979, Fuchs died in Dresden in 1988.
ASSESSMENT: Fuchs was a nuclear scientist who, raised in times of great political threat and upheaval, adopted Communist ideals and was responsible for accelerating the Soviet Unions production of atomic warfare.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: None.
ONELINER: Klaus Fuchs, atom spy
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Moss, Norman, Klaus Fuchs: The Man Who Stole the Atom Bomb, London & Glasgow: Grafton Books, 1987.