Alan Nunn May

Alan Nunn May: The First Atomic Spy Britain Sent to Prison

Before Klaus Fuchs, there was Alan Nunn May. While working on the Anglo-Canadian atomic project during the Second World War, this Cambridge-trained nuclear physicist handed Soviet military intelligence small samples of uranium-233 and uranium-235, along with secret reports on reactors, the Trinity test and American production of bomb material. In September 1945 a Soviet cipher clerk walked out of the embassy in Ottawa with documents that exposed him. On 1 May 1946 Nunn May stood in the Old Bailey, having pleaded guilty, and received ten years' hard labour. He was the first person convicted of passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. To the end of his life he insisted he had been right.

A Brassfounder's Son With a First

Nunn May was born on 2 May 1911 in Kings Norton, Birmingham, the son of a brassfounder. He went to King Edward's School and in 1930 won a scholarship to Trinity Hall, Cambridge. There Patrick Blackett tutored him in physics, and he graduated with a first. He stayed at Cambridge for a doctorate; Ernest Rutherford, the Cavendish Professor, was among his examiners. By the late 1930s he was lecturing in physics at King's College London.

The Politics of the Laboratory

Cambridge turned him toward Communism. He joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in the 1930s, was active in the Association of Scientific Workers and made trips to Moscow. His own later statements framed everything around a single aim: defeating Nazi Germany and Japan.

Radar, Bristol and the Bomb Project

When war came in 1939 he was assigned to secret radar work in Suffolk. That October King's College moved its physics department to Bristol, and he continued his research there. In 1942 James Chadwick recruited him to a Cambridge team, including Lew Kowarski, studying a heavy-water reactor for Tube Alloys, Britain's atomic bomb project. From April to November 1942 he worked at the Cavendish Laboratory at the same time as Engelbert Broda, an Austrian Communist physicist.

His first act of espionage, by his own later account, came after he read a secret American report on a possible German radiological weapon. He passed it to the Russians.

Montreal: The Samples

In January 1943 Nunn May joined the Montreal Laboratory, the Anglo-Canadian team building a heavy-water reactor at Chalk River, Ontario. His work also took him to the Argonne Laboratory in Chicago, part of the American project. In Canada he was approached by Lieutenant Angelov of the GRU, Soviet military intelligence, which ran a network under Colonel Nikolai Zabotin, the military attaché in Ottawa. His code name was ALEK.

He gave Angelov small samples of uranium-233 and uranium-235. He borrowed research documents from the laboratory library, many of them American, so they could be copied. He passed on technical information about atomic reactors, the Trinity test and the quantities of nuclear material produced at Oak Ridge and Hanford.

The Clerk Who Walked Out

On 5 September 1945 Igor Gouzenko, a cipher clerk at the Soviet embassy in Ottawa, defected with documents that laid bare Zabotin's network and named Nunn May. The physicist's Canadian posting ended that month, and he returned to his lectureship in London. MI5 let him go and watched, hoping he would lead them to other agents. He never did. He was arrested in March 1946.

Ten Years' Hard Labour

He confessed and pleaded guilty to breaching the Official Secrets Act. On 1 May 1946 at the Old Bailey he was sentenced to ten years' hard labour. His case was the first public proof that the Soviet Union had obtained Allied atomic secrets by espionage, four years before Fuchs confessed. He refused to name his associates. He said he had acted because it was "a contribution I could make to the safety of mankind."

In March 1949 William Skardon of MI5, the interrogator who would break Fuchs the following winter, questioned him in Wakefield Prison. Nunn May said only that he had been recruited hours before leaving England for Canada, by someone now out of reach. British files released decades later concluded that the recruiter was Broda, who had left the country by 1949.

Unrepentant

Nunn May was released at the end of 1952, after six and a half years. More than 30 reporters waited outside Wakefield Prison for him. A typewritten statement issued the next day was blunt: "I myself think that I acted rightly." He wrote that he had been concerned with securing victory over Nazi Germany and Japan, and that he wanted useful scientific work as soon as possible.

In 1953 he married Hilde Broda, an Austrian doctor and Engelbert Broda's former wife; they had a son. He found work with a scientific instruments firm in Cambridge.

Accra: A Second Career

In 1961 Nunn May moved to the University of Ghana, where he became professor of physics. Hilde continued her medical career in Accra. He built a programme of solid-state physics research and created a science museum. He stayed seventeen years, retiring in 1978 and returning to Cambridge.

The Last Account

Three weeks before his death he dictated a final statement, *This Is a Disclosure of How I Became a Russian Spy*. In it he confirmed that he had been a member of the Communist Party. It was published after he died. Alan Nunn May died in Cambridge on 12 January 2003, aged 91.

On Screen and in Print

• The Cloud Chamber (2003), novel, Sceptre, by Clare George; Nunn May appears as a character, the best friend of the fictional physicist at the centre of the story.
• Fallout: Exposing an Atomic Spy (2026), non-fiction book, Pen and Sword, by David Tremain; it examines the case against Nunn May and his life as an unapologetic convicted spy.

Why Alan Nunn May Is Called a Genius

Because the ability was real. A first in physics at Cambridge, a doctorate examined by Ernest Rutherford and a hand-picked place on the Allied reactor programme mark a scientist of genuine talent. Later he built physics research and a science museum at the University of Ghana. He was not a field-changing theorist on the scale of Fuchs; his strength was experimental nuclear physics. That is why he appears on Geniuses.club.

It is not why he is remembered. In wartime, Britain, Canada and the United States trusted him with some of the most closely guarded science of the war, and he handed it to a foreign intelligence service. Then he spent the remaining fifty-seven years of his life insisting he had been right. His talent made the betrayal possible. It did not make it justified, and the crime, not the physics, is the reason his name survives.

Achievements

• The first person convicted of passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, after handing Soviet military intelligence samples of uranium-233 and uranium-235; sentenced to ten years' hard labour on 1 Ma
• Won a first in physics at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and earned a doctorate with Ernest Rutherford among his examiners.
• Recruited by James Chadwick in 1942 to Cambridge's Tube Alloys team studying a heavy-water reactor.
• Joined the Montreal Laboratory in January 1943, the Anglo-Canadian team building the heavy-water reactor at Chalk River, Ontario.
• Worked on secret British radar research in 1939, at the start of the Second World War.
• Lectured in physics at King's College London before the war.
• Served 17 years as professor of physics at the University of Ghana, building solid-state physics research and founding a science museum.