Fuchs, Klaus

Fuchs, Klaus (1911–1988) German-born British physicist and Soviet spy Born in Rüsselsheim, Germany, Klaus Fuchs was educated at the Universities of Leipzig and Kiel, where he studied physics and mathematics. An enthusiastic member of the German Communist Party beginning in 1930, he fled Germany after Adolf Hitler was named chancellor and the Nazis came to power in 1933. Immigrating to Great Britain, he earned a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Edinburgh. At the outbreak of World War II, he was briefly interned by the British government as an enemy alien, but his credentials as a physicist earned him a place on what became the joint Anglo-American project to create an atomic bomb. He carried out research at the University of Birmingham and in 1942 became a British citizen. Despite his new citizenship, Fuchs remained a committed communist, and he began passing information on the top-secret atomic bomb project to the Soviet Union. In 1943, Fuchs was sent to the United States to work at Los Alamos, New Mexico, the central laboratory of the Manhattan Project and the very epicenter of World War II nuclear weapons development. His work here provided him with a comprehensive view of the atomic bomb project, so that he moved beyond the theoretical appreciation he had had in Birmingham to practical knowledge of actual design. This he passed on to the Soviets. It was information so valuable that most scientists and historians believe it gave the Soviets at least a year's head start on developing their own atomic bomb shortly after World War II. During the war, Fuchs's espionage remained undiscovered. He returned to England at the conclusion of peace and rose to chair the physics department of the British nuclear research center at Harwell. In 1950, however, Fuchs's espionage activities were at last uncovered, and he was arrested. He soon confessed to having passed information to the Soviet Union since 1943. Found guilty, Fuchs was sentenced to 14 years in prison but was released in 1959 for good behavior. Immediately after his release, he traveled to communist East Germany, where he was granted citizenship and named deputy director of the Central Institute for Nuclear Research at Rossendorf. He expressed absolutely no regret for his espionage and was lavishly honored by the East German Communist Party as well as by its state-controlled scientific establishment.