Trinity

"Trinity" was the codename for the test explosion of the atomic bomb in New Mexico on July 16, 1945. This exceptional book tells the story of the bomb''s metaphorical father, Rudolf Peierls; his intellectual son, the atomic spy, Klaus Fuchs, and the ghosts of the security services in Britain, the USA and USSR. Against the background of pre-war Nazi Germany, World War II and the following Cold War, the book traces how Peierls brought Fuchs into his family and his laboratory, how Fuchs became a spy, his motivations and the information he passed to his Soviet contacts, including after he went with Peierls to join the Manhattan Project 1944. Frank Close is himself a distinguished nuclear physicist: uniquely, the book explains the science as well as the spying. In 1951, the US Congressional Committee on Atomic Espionage concluded, "Fuchs alone has influenced the safety of more people and accomplished greater damage than any other spy not only in the history of the United States, but in the history of nations." This book is the most comprehensive account yet published of these events, and of the tragic figure at their center.