Pontecorvo, Bruno

▪ 1994

      Italian-born British physicist (b. Aug. 22, 1913, Marina di Pisa, Italy—d. Sept. 25, 1993, Dubna, Russia), was a distinguished scientist who defected to the Soviet Union to study the peaceful uses of nuclear power. Pontecorvo was one of eight children born to a Jewish textile merchant. He received his doctorate from the University of Rome, where in the early 1930s he worked with Enrico Fermi. After Mussolini's government passed a series of race laws, Pontecorvo fled to Paris to continue his research. When Paris was invaded by the Germans in 1940, he made his way to the U.S. In 1943 Pontecorvo joined the Anglo-Canadian nuclear research team at Chalf River in Canada. He became a British citizen in 1948, and the following year he joined the Atomic Energy Authority research station at Harwell, England, where classified research was being conducted. While on vacation in Italy in 1950, Pontecorvo, his wife, and three children abruptly left for Stockholm. They then went to Helsinki, Fin., and were not heard from until 1955, when Pontecorvo appeared at a press conference in Moscow to promote the peaceful use of nuclear power. His disappearance had followed revelations that some highly placed scientists (including Klaus Fuchs, one of Pontecorvo's colleagues at Harwell) had given secrets to the Soviet Union and raised fears about how seriously these scientists had endangered the free world. Pontecorvo denied ever having worked on nuclear weapons research. While in the Soviet Union, he worked at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research outside Moscow. He received numerous awards from the state, including the Lenin Prize (1963) and the Order of Lenin (1983).

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