Fuchs, (Emil Julius) Klaus (1911-1988)Fuchs was a German Born British physicist who, in the 1940s, conveyed important details of the Anglo-US atom bomb programme to the Soviet Union.
Fuchs arrived in Britain from Germany in 1933 and continued his studies in theoretical physics at Bristol and Edinburgh, proving himself to be a brilliant mathematicians. He was interned in 1940 and spent some time in a Canadian detention camp but, at the urging of prominent scientists in Britain he returned in 1941 to work on the atom bomb project at Birmingham University. Fuchs had made no secret of his communists sympathies while in Germany, but he was given security clearance by the British authorities and in August 1942 was granted British citizenship.
Taking full advantage of his access to top secret information, Fuchs began to pass vital technical information to Soviet agents almost immediately and continued to do so in the USA after he joined the research team working on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos in November 1943. He returned to Britain in June 1946 and was appointed head of theoretical physics at the Harwell Atomic Energy Establishment. The following year he began passing secrets to the Soviets. Not until 1949 did Fuchs fall under suspicion, when US cipher experts managed to break Soviet intelligence codes, Fuchs eventually confessed to senior M15 officer and was sentenced to fourteens years in prison. His evidence was used to incriminate his contact in the USA. Fuchs was released in 1959 and went to East Germany, where he became deputy director of the Central Institute of Nuclear Research at Rossendorf, near Dresden.Fuchs, (Emil Julius) Klaus (1911-1988)
