Half-life

Long before he became a figure in Cold War intrigue, Bruno Pontecorvo built his career chasing a particle his colleagues regarded as crucial yet almost impossible to detect: the neutrino, which has nearly no mass and was thought vital to how nuclear fission unfolds. Working on the Manhattan Project alongside Enrico Fermi, he earned a name as a gifted physicist, and his efforts helped open the atomic age. Many expected him to receive a Nobel Prize, yet in late summer 1950 he disappeared, and he resurfaced on the far side of the Iron Curtain at the height of the Cold War.

Physicist and historian Frank Close traces Pontecorvo's life in a account drawn from close access to his friends, family and fellow scientists, much of it previously unrecorded. The story carries the weight of a spy thriller, with secret atomic research, a notorious double agent and a reported kidnapping by Soviet operatives all woven into the narrative.

Beyond the personal drama, the book is a history of particle physics at the point where its discoveries were turned into a weapon, and it will appeal to readers interested in both scientific biography and the politics of the nuclear era.