Klaus Fuchs

I

Introduction

Klaus Fuchs (1911-1988), German-born British theoretical physicist who was imprisoned for giving the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) secret information on nuclear weapons research carried out in Britain and the United States during World War II (1939-1945).

II

Early Years

Emil Julius Klaus Fuchs, the son of a Lutheran pastor, was born in Russelsheim, Germany. He studied theoretical physics at the universities of Kiel and Leipzig and earned a reputation for meticulous, hard work. He joined the Communist Party (see Communism) while a university student in Germany and came into conflict with the National Socialist (Nazi) Party that took power in Germany in 1933. That year, he left Germany for Britain, where he continued his studies at universities in Bristol and Birmingham.

III

Wartime Work and Espionage

At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Fuchs, like other German citizens then living in Britain, was interned (confined as a security risk) in Canada. However, because of his exceptional talent as a scientist, he was released in 1941 at the request of British scientists to work on the top-secret atomic bomb project at Birmingham University and was granted British citizenship.

After the German invasion of Russia in 1941, Fuchs approached the Soviet Embassy in London to offer to pass on nuclear secrets. He did so for nearly nine years, most crucially during his period of service on the Manhattan Project, which he joined in 1943 along with other British scientists. There, in Los Alamos, New Mexico, Fuchs’s quiet, unstinting work on the design of the first atomic bombs was interspersed with a series of meetings with Soviet agents operating out of nearby Santa Fe. He handed over material revealing progress on the plutonium (implosion) bomb as well as on the simpler uranium bomb.

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IV

After the War

On his return to Britain after the war, Fuchs became head of the theoretical physics division at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment. He was arrested in 1950 after confessing that he had handed over secrets to Soviet agents. His short trial on charges of violating Britain’s Official Secrets Act received worldwide coverage and set alarm bells ringing in the United States. An investigation by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) into Fuchs’s contacts in the United States eventually led to the arrest and trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg on charges of espionage.

Fuchs was convicted of passing on secrets and sentenced to 14 years in prison, the maximum penalty for the crime. After serving just over nine years, he was released and went to East Germany, where his father lived. He was given citizenship and appointed deputy director of the Institute for Nuclear Research at Rossendorf, near Dresden.

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