Klaus Fuchs

Klaus Fuchs was part of the team of scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project.

Three persons were caught committing espionage activities at Los Alamos: Klaus Fuchs, Theodore Hall, and David Greenglass.

Klaus Fuchs came to work at the Manhattan Project Los Alamos lab as part of a group of British scientists. No one knew that he was a Russian spy. At Los Alamos, Fuchs worked on implosion problems and delivered sketches of Fat Man to his Soviet courier, Harry Gold. The FBI along with British intelligence began questioning Fuchs in 1949. He confessed and was convicted of espionage in a two-day trial.

Klaus Fuchs was born on December 29, 1911, in Rüsselsheim, Germany. In 1933, he emigrated to Great Britain.

In 1937, Klaus Fuchs earned his Ph.d. in Physics from the University of Bristol, and was then invited to study at Edinburgh University.

Because of his German citizenship, Klaus Fuchs was held at an internment camp in Quebec, Canada, at the start of World War Two. His Professor Max Born of Edinburgh University appealed on his behalf, and Fuchs was able to return to Edinburgh. He became a British citizen in 1942 and began work on the British atomic bomb research project.

In 1943, Klaus Fuchs and a group of British scientists joined the Manhattan Project to collaborate on the atom bomb.

In 1949, after Klaus Fuchs had returned to England and began working for the Harwell Atomic Energy Research Establishment, he was arrested on charges of espionage for giving atomic secrets to the Soviets.

The arrest came after Soviet spy ciphers were decoded as a result of the VENONA project. Klaus Fuchs confessed and was sentenced to 14 years in prison. His testimony led to the arrests of David Greenglass and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in the U.S.

On June 23, 1959, Klaus Fuchs was released from jail and emigrated to East Germany. He died in East Berlin in on January 28, 1988.