Half-life
Subtitle: the divided life of Bruno Pontecorvo, physicist or spy
By: Frank Close
Publisher: Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 378
ISBN-13: 9780465069989
Subjects: Nuclear physicists; Biography; Spies
Description: Bruno Pontecorvo dedicated his career to hunting for the Higgs boson of his day-- the neutrino, a nearly massless particle considered essential to the process of nuclear fission. His work on the Manhattan project under Enrico Fermi confirmed his reputation as a brilliant physicist and helped usher in the nuclear age. He should have won a Nobel Prize, but late in the summer of 1950 he vanished. At the height of the Cold War, Pontecorvo had disappeared behind the Iron Curtain. In Half-Life, physicist and historian Frank Close offers a heretofore untold history of Pontecorvo's life, based on unprecedented access to his friends, family, and colleagues. With all the elements of a Cold War thriller-- classified atomic research, an infamous double agent, a kidnapping by Soviet operatives-- Half-Life is a history of particle physics at perhaps its most powerful: when it created the bomb.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 319-366) and index.
Table of contents: title: Midway on life's journey; title: First half. From Pisa to Rome ; Slow neutrons and fast reactions : 1934-1936 ; Paris and politics : 1936-1940 ; The first escape : 1940 ; Neutrons for oil and war : 1940-1941 ; East and West : 1941-1942 ; The pile at Chalk River : 1943-1945 ; Physics in the open : 1945-1948 ; Maneuvers : 1945-1950; title: Interlude. West to East; title: Half time. chain reaction : 1949-1950 ; From Abingdon; title: to where? : 1950 ; The dear departed : 1950 ; The MI5 letters; title: Second half. In dark woods ; Exile ; Resurrection ; Mr. Neutrino ; Private Bruno; title: Afterllife. The right road lost.