Norman Moss - Klaus Fuchs - The Man Who Stole the Atom Bomb

When Fuchs arrived at Harwell, he was still worried by the discovery of the Canadian spy ring and the arrest of Nunn May, and he decided to lie low for a while and not resume his contacts with the Soviet intelligence service. This was just as well for him. Following the Canadian revelations, the British security authorities put a number of foreign-born scientists engaged in secret work under surveillance, including Fuchs. He was watched for the first six months he was at Harwell, but nothing suspicious was observed and surveillance was withdrawn.

He soon became well known in the Harwell community, striding about the site with his head tilted slightly upwards, his hair receding from his high forehead now, pale-faced, calm, imperturbable, usually either silent or talking, in his slightly high-pitched voice, about nuclear physics and its applications. He still gave the impression of a man interested only in his work. The AERE News, the weekly Harwell newspaper, carried a series of clerihews about Harwell personalities. One read:

Fuchs

Looks

Like an ascetic

Theoretic.

He had the cautious person’s habit of pausing before replying to a question. Sometimes, if the question was serious and the answer of some moment, he would say, ‘I’ll think about that and give you an answer tomorrow.’

For a while, he shared an office with Buneman and a secretary, a small room containing three desks and a blackboard. As often as not, Buneman would be carrying on a conversation with somebody and the secretary would be typing and Fuchs would be working, usually smoking a cigarette, apparently oblivious to the noise around him. Later, when new buildings were put up, the Theoretical Division had its own, Building 33, a red-brick, two-storey structure, and Fuchs had his own office there and his own secretary. He still worked hard, often going back to his office in the evening.

Others became aware also of his remarkable memory, one of the features that most impressed his juniors. Once, he went to another institute to attend a lecture on field theory. A couple of younger men who could not attend asked him two weeks later whether he could recall for them something of what was said. He sat down and went over the whole lecture, bringing in all the points in the correct order.

As the head of a division, he had administrative responsibilities and he took these seriously, looking after the interests of his division assiduously. He usually interviewed potential recruits in company with Buneman, letting Buneman do most of the talking. He was supportive of his staff.

He would back vigorously a man’s request for more spacious accommodation after his wife had a baby, and argue to get one of his people promotion, or a rise in salary.

Meanwhile, Cockcroft was arguing similarly on Fuchs’s behalf, in terms that say something about Fuchs’s professional abilities. He wrote to Harwell’s paymasters recommending him for promotion. Fuchs, he said, occupied ‘a key position in the whole world of atomic energy. He is one of the few senior physicists not occupying a university chair, and he could be a strong candidate for future chairs.’ Fuchs was promoted twice to higher grades during his three and a half years at Harwell, and his salary rose to £1,800 a year.

If there was a difficult mathematical problem in his department he would usually take it over himself. This was not because he wanted all the credit; he was scrupulous about giving credit where it was due. He simply thought that he was the most able person around. A few people at Harwell found him arrogant.

He came to sit on more interdepartmental committees, both scientific and administrative, than anyone else. In one of the occasional moments when his arrogance seemed extreme, he was heard to remark, I suppose you could say that I am Harwell.’

He was friendly to his staff, and they all felt free to wander into his office at any time with a problem. But he was not on close personal terms with most of them. He knew very little about most of his junior staff that did not concern their work.

He was not convivial. He would discuss a physics problem with one or two individuals in his office, but was never one of a bunch of men drinking coffee in the corridor and talking excitedly about a new idea. Others would leave their offices for a tea break, but he would have his secretary bring him a cup of tea and a bun at his desk. Most of the others would have their lunch in the corrugated iron Nissen hut that served as a mess hall, which they christened the Black Beetle, lining up with their trays and squeezing onto the crowded tables. Fuchs would usually eat his in the dining-room at Ridgeway House, where the meal was served by waitresses.

Ridgeway House was run by Mrs Edith Alexander, who was a Cambridge graduate and had the reputation of being an academic snob, giving preference to those with better degrees. Fuchs was always one of her favourites; he referred to her once as ‘my English mother’. After a while she left Ridgeway House and opened a guest house in the nearby town of Abingdon, called Lacie’s Court, mostly for Harwell scientists and visitors. Guests were given breakfast and an evening meal.

Fuchs moved to Lacie’s Court, partly because, unlike many others, he had a car and could travel easily to and from work. It was a large house built in the seventeenth century, with a baronial hall, a sweeping oak staircase and a spacious garden.

Some scenes from Fuchs’s life at Lacie’s Court seem like snapshots of a normal, happy existence. Here is Fuchs preparing for a formal dinner, coming downstairs waving his black bow tie and complaining, ‘I can’t tie this bloody thing!’ and getting a fellow resident to tie it for him. Here is Fuchs in the garden, throwing a ball again and again for the Alexanders’ golden retriever, while Mrs Alexander sits in a deckchair shelling peas. Here is Fuchs coming downstairs on Christmas morning, looking over the Christmas tree for the present with his name on it — there is one for each of the twelve residents — and giving his own gift-wrapped presents to Mrs Alexander and her daughter, Joy, who had just come out of the WRNS.

He was invited out a lot. For one thing, there was no other single man so senior in status. As at Los Alamos, wives ministered to his needs. One recalls, ‘He was a challenge to the matrons of Harwell, a man in his thirties, living alone, skinny and rather sad-looking. Maternal bosoms heaved.’ Several couples would ask him in regularly for a casual supper. He would chat inconsequentially about events at Harwell, or the issues of the day, and leave early. He did not talk about politics, but left the impression by the occasional remark that he supported the Labour Government.

He was asked to most of the parties, and he went and danced and drank, for he still drank a lot on these occasions. But he never joined in the boisterous behaviour that often characterized Harwell parties, the inebriated singing, the sexual gropings. Once, some people gave a costume party, and Fuchs turned up as an archetypal civil servant, wearing a dark suit and bowler hat, and wrapped around with yards and yards of red tape.

At one party he let slip, for the only time that anyone could recall, that he had once been a Communist. It was at the home of John Scott, a senior physicist in the Theoretical Division. Scott and his wife Eleanor had become friends of his; he and Scott were born on the same day, and one year Eleanor Scott baked a birthday cake for them both. This particular party ended for most of the guests at about midnight, but a few stalwarts carried on until dawn. Fuchs was among these, and he was still drinking whisky when Eleanor Scott brought their baby down for its early morning feed. She sat next to Fuchs on the couch and they talked while she fed the baby from a bottle. She touched on politics and something happening in the world, and she said at one point, ‘I really hate Communists.’ He said, ‘I was a Communist once. You don’t hate me, do you?’ She admitted that she did not, and did not give the matter much thought after that; after all, a lot of people had been Communists when they were young.