Award-winning author and physicist Frank Close spins an outstanding biography.  A story of the fascinating atomic physicist, Bruno Pontecorvo,  who worked on the Manhattan Project and ultimately defected to the Soviet Union.  The book’s suspense surrounds theft of materials and blueprints for atomic bomb making and double agent Kim Philby’s warnings to the Soviets about Bruno Pontecorvo’s imminent pursuit by the FBI.  Additionally, Bruno Pontecorvo kept logbooks his first five years in the USSR which reveal Russian science approaches to a hydrogen bomb.
Bruno Pontecorvo brought neutrino particles to the world stage of science amidst the dawn of the Cold War.  The legacy of Pontecorvo is enigmatic and complicated because he missed out on the international recognition and accolades through his defection at age 37 with wife and three children in tow to obscurity within the confines of Soviet protection.  The defection was not discovered for five years after his disappearance and it was met with intrigue and criticism.  His later attempts to travel abroad for a critical experiment or enter CERN in Geneva were refused and his work was then relegated simply to Russian science journals.
The Half Life idea is explained as a play on words both in atomic energy and by the split lifestyles of Bruno Pontecorvo the ingenius scientist vs Bruno Maximovitch the secret Communist.   The book is finely researched with intensity around the mysterious life and politics surrounding  Bruno Pontecorvo.
Buy It