Alan Nunn May – Forgotten Soviet Spy
Alan Nunn May. A nuclear scientist who served six years in prison for passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union during World War II.
The 1946 trial of Alan Nunn May for passing "information which might be directly or indirectly useful to the enemy" was the first of a series of US cases that demonstrated the extent to which American and British nuclear secrets were leaked to the Soviet Union during World War II.
The damage done by Nunn May's activities does not compare with the betrayal of the German-born British scientist Klaus Fuchs, who was later sentenced to 14 years in prison, or with the betrayal of the Americans Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed in 1953. Nunn May did not have the same access to the details of the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb, and his betrayal occurred more quickly. But his case was the first evidence that the British end to the American-British nuclear program weapons was the weak link. Fuchs's subsequent revelations led to the US refusing to share atomic secrets with Britain.
Nunn May, a member of the Communist Party [USA] and a keen Soviet sympathiser since the 1930s, claimed in his defence that the Russians were our allies at the time he passed information to the Soviet embassy in Ottawa. However, although the then Attorney General, Sir Hartley Shawcross, told the court (probably with deliberate irony in light of Churchill's recent (March 5, 1946, in Fulton, USA) 'Iron Curtain' speech) that 'there was no suggestion that the Russians were enemies or potential enemies', they nevertheless fell into the category of 'unauthorised persons' who were not allowed to pass on such sensitive material. Having admitted to activities 'prejudicial to the security and interests of the state', Nunn May was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment.
Nunn May was a shy, solitary man, lacking the fervor of the left in Cambridge, where he went to study physics in 1930. But he embraced its communism and anti-fascism, and believed in the rightness of his actions. When he was convicted, many in the British scientific community protested the severity of his sentence.
Alan Nunn May was born in 1911 in Kings Norton, Birmingham, the son of a brass foundryman. He was an intelligent child, and scholarships allowed him to go first to King Edward's School, Birmingham, and then to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he was taught physics by P. M. S. Blackett.
Having graduated with first-class honours in physics, he then went on to do research for his doctorate, one of the examiners of which was Rutherford, then Professor of Experimental Physics at Cavendish University. Having received his doctorate, he was appointed to a lectureship at King's College London, where he continued his research.
Although his experience at Cambridge had already radicalised his views and he had joined the Communist Party, he did not, like some of his contemporaries, side with the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939 – P.G.), but contented himself with rare trips to Moscow.
When war broke out in 1939, he worked briefly on a new secret radar project. But in October 1939, the physics department at King's College was evacuated to Bristol, where he continued his particle research. He was later removed from his teaching post to join what became known as the Tubular Alloy Project, a British programme to investigate the possibility of making an atomic bomb, at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge.
Eventually, British nuclear research moved to Canada, both for security reasons and to facilitate collaboration with American scientists working on the atomic bomb. Nunn May went with a British team in 1943, and at some point thereafter he was contacted by Colonel Nikolai Zabotin, who, posing as the Soviet military attaché in Ottawa, was running one of the most important Soviet teams trying to penetrate the Allied atomic bomb program on behalf of the GRU, the military intelligence agency.
Over the next two years, Nunn May's work took him frequently to the Chalk River heavy water reactor and also made several visits to the Argonne Laboratory in Chicago.
Noticing that these visits were more frequent than those of any other British physicist, the Americans became suspicious and limited their number.
When GRU lieutenant Pavel Angelov first asked him for information on atomic energy, Nunn May agreed without hesitation. He was tasked with analyzing an American report that the Germans were working on a heavy-water reactor and could very well drop a "dirty" nuclear bomb on the USSR.
Nunn May passed on the information but refused to accept the modest $200 and two bottles of whiskey offered by the GRU as payment. His refusal was overruled, and his Soviet masters received receipts. Under interrogation, he swore that he had destroyed the money.
In late 1945, Nunn May informed his Soviet contacts that his stay in Canada was coming to an end. They asked him for a favor – a detailed report on the detonation of the first atomic bomb in Alamogordo, New Mexico, on June 16 – which he provided. In September, Nunn May returned to London, to his post at King’s College, where the Soviets intended to re-establish contact with him.
However, these calculations were disrupted by the desertion of GRU lieutenant Igor Gouzenko (September 5, 1945 – P.G.), who surrendered to Canadian authorities in Ottawa with an impressive package of documents revealing the scale of Soviet espionage on Western allies throughout the war. Among these documents was irrefutable evidence of Nunn May’s work (on the USSR – P.G.) during this period.
When Gouzenko's revelations were passed on to the British authorities, no immediate action was taken to arrest Nunn May. He was placed under surveillance, in the belief that his further contacts with Soviet agents would lead to the arrest of the larger figure whose presence Gouzenko's material suggested.
During this period, Nunn May may have seriously reconsidered his role. With the military allies already beginning to quarrel, he decided he did not want to continue the case and was unable to arrange a meeting with his new Soviet boss in London. At his trial, he said he wanted to "wash his hands of the matter."
When it became apparent that Nunn May's continued freedom would not yield any further information about Soviet espionage activities, he was arrested in March 1946 and charged under the Official Secrets Act.
He admitted the facts, although he softened his guilt: “All this story was extremely painful for me, and I took it on only because I considered it a contribution [in science]". [Lawyer] Gardiner further argued in Nunn May's defense that the information he had passed on had merely saved time for foreign powers engaged in atomic research.
The idea that Nunn May's activities were merely to spread scientific knowledge around the world did not impress the trial judge, Oliver. On 1 May 1946, he sentenced Nunn May to ten years' imprisonment, of which he served six. Pardoned for good behaviour, he was released from Wakefield Prison at the end of December 1952 and returned to Cambridge, where he met and married the Viennese-born Dr Hildegard (Hilda) Broda, who was the town's deputy medical officer. In 1954, Cambridge County Council rejected an application to have her dismissed.
For the next nine years, Nunn May was effectively blacklisted from job applicants, but received a small stipend to work in a private laboratory, where he made scientific instruments while also pursuing theoretical physics.
In 1961, he went to Ghana to take up a post as research professor of physics at the University of Ghana, where he later became dean. His wife, Hilda, and her family went with him, and she gained a reputation in the country as a tireless health worker.
Nunn May retired in 1976 but remained in Ghana for two more years as a government adviser on science education. He returned to Cambridge in 1978.
Alan Nunn May, physicist, was born in Birmingham on 2 May 1911 and died in Cambridge on 12 January 2003, aged 91. He is survived by his wife Hilda, a son and a stepson.
The Times, 24 January 2003
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