Half Life

<p>The memo landed on Kim Philby's desk in Washington DC in July 1950. Three months later Bruno Pontecorvo a physicist at Harwell Britain's atomic energy lab disappeared without a trace. When he re-surfaced six years later he was on the other side of the Iron Curtain.</p><p>One of the most brilliant scientists of his generation Pontecorvo was privy to many secrets: he had worked on the Anglo-Canadian arm of the Manhattan Project and quietly discovered a way to find the uranium coveted by nuclear powers. Yet when he disappeared MI5 insisted he was not a threat. Now based on unprecedented access to archives letters surviving family members and scientists award-winning writer and physics professor Frank Close exposes the truth about a man irrevocably marked by the advent of the atomic age and the Cold War.</p>