Alan Nunn May (sometimes Allan) (2 May 1911 – 12 January 2003) was a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

physicist and a confessed and convicted Soviet spy who supplied secrets of British and American atomic research to the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

Early life and education

Nunn May was the youngest of four children of Walter Frederick Nunn May, a brassfounder, and Mary Annie, née Kendall. He was born in Bedruthan, Park Hill,

Moseley Moseley is a suburb of south Birmingham, England, south of the city centre. The area is a popular cosmopolitan residential location and leisure destination, with a number of bars and restaurants. The area also has a number of boutiques and ot ...

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1. ...

, and educated at

King Edward's School, Birmingham King Edward's School (KES) is an independent day school for boys in the British public school tradition, located in Edgbaston, Birmingham. Founded by King Edward VI in 1552, it is part of the Foundation of the Schools of King Edward VI in Bir ...

.Cathcart, Brian
May, Alan Nunn (1911–2003)
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography As a scholarship student at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, he achieved a first in physics, which led to doctoral studies under Charles Ellis and lectureship at King's College London.

Career

Early communist ties

Nunn May joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in the 1930s and was active in the

Association of Scientific Workers The Association of Scientific Workers (AScW) was a trade union in the United Kingdom. It was founded as the National Union of Scientific Workers in 1918, changing its name to the Association of Scientific Workers in 1927. The union largely rep ...

. The

Cambridge Five The Cambridge Spy Ring was a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and was active from the 1930s until at least into the early 1950s. None of the known members were ever prosecuted ...

spy ring member Donald Duart Maclean was also at Trinity Hall during an overlapping period.

World War II

During

, Nunn May initially worked on radar in Suffolk and then with Cecil Powell in Bristol on a project that attempted to use photographic methods to detect fast particles from radioactive decay.

James Chadwick Sir James Chadwick, (20 October 1891 – 24 July 1974) was an English physicist who was awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the neutron in 1932. In 1941, he wrote the final draft of the MAUD Report, which inspi ...

recruited him to a

Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III of England, Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world' ...

team working on a possible heavy water reactor. The team was part of the British

Tube Alloys Tube Alloys was the research and development programme authorised by the United Kingdom, with participation from Canada, to develop nuclear weapons during the Second World War. Starting before the Manhattan Project in the United States, the ...

directorate that was merged into the American Manhattan Project, the successful effort to create a nuclear weapon. In January 1943, the Cambridge team, including Nunn May, was transferred to the Montreal Laboratory, which was building a reactor at Chalk River, near Ottawa,

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. Nunn May's Canadian position ended in September 1945, and he returned to his lecturing post in London.

Soviet espionage

He had let his membership of the Communist Party lapse by 1940, but at Cambridge, when he saw an American report mentioning that Germany might be able to build a

dirty bomb A dirty bomb or radiological dispersal device is a radiological weapon that combines radioactive material with conventional explosives. The purpose of the weapon is to contaminate the area around the dispersal agent/conventional explosion with ...

, he passed that on to a Soviet contact. In Canada, he was approached by Lieutenant Angelov of the

GRU The Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, rus, Гла́вное управле́ние Генера́льного шта́ба Вооружённых сил Росси́йской Федера́ци ...

(Soviet military intelligence) for information on atomic research. He continued his espionage by secretly supplying small samples of the isotopes

uranium-233 Uranium-233 (233U or U-233) is a fissile isotope of uranium that is bred from thorium-232 as part of the thorium fuel cycle. Uranium-233 was investigated for use in nuclear weapons and as a reactor fuel. It has been used successfully in exp ...

and 235. The courier of the samples was not informed of the danger of radiation, developed painful lesions and needed lifelong regular blood transfusions for the rest of his life. Nunn May also borrowed library research documents on nuclear power, many from the US, for copying. The Canadian Royal Commission later investigated and States that he was paid with two bottles of

whiskey Whisky or whiskey is a type of distilled alcoholic beverage made from fermented grain mash. Various grains (which may be malted) are used for different varieties, including barley, corn, rye, and wheat. Whisky is typically aged in wooden ...

and at least C$700. Nunn May said that he accepted the money under protest and promptly burnt it. Angelov gave him details for a rendezvous with the GRU next to the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

, in London, after his return.

Convicted of espionage

A GRU cipher clerk in Canada,

Igor Gouzenko Igor Sergeyevich Gouzenko (russian: Игорь Сергеевич Гузенко ; January 26, 1919 – June 25, 1982) was a cipher clerk for the Soviet embassy to Canada in Ottawa, Ontario, and a lieutenant of the GRU (Main Intelligence Direct ...

, defected to the West in Ottawa in September 1945, around the time that Nunn May's Canadian assignment ended. Gouzenko passed along copies of GRU documents implicating Nunn May, including details of the proposed meeting in London. Nunn May did not go to the British Museum meeting, but he was arrested in March 1946 and confessed to espionage. On 1 May 1946, he was sentenced to ten years' hard labour. He was released in late 1952, after serving six-and-a-half years. Nunn May refused to define his actions as treason and claimed in a statement after his release from prison that he believed that he had "acted rightly" as a spy because of being "wholeheartedly concerned with securing victory over Nazi Germany and Japan, and the furtherance of the development of the peaceful uses of atomic energy." Blacklisted from universities in Britain, Nunn May worked for a scientific instruments company and in 1961 he went to work at the University of Ghana, where he conducted research in solid-state physics and created a science museum.

Personal life and death

In 1953, Nunn May married Hilde Broda, the ex-wife of Engelbert Broda. They had a son and a stepson from Hilde's previous marriage. He returned to Cambridge in 1978 and died there in a hospital on 12 January 2003. Cause of death was

pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severi ...

and pulmonary disease. A 2002 statement, released after his death, stated that he had no regrets about his spying activities. It was passed to ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' newspaper in 2003 and had been dictated to a relative in late 2002.

Legacy

Nunn May's arrest and sentence in 1946 first showed publicly that the Soviet Union had obtained atomic secrets by espionage. His clearance by

MI5 The Security Service, also known as MI5 ( Military Intelligence, Section 5), is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), G ...

also led to American distrust of Britain, and the

McMahon Act The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 (McMahon Act) determined how the United States would control and manage the nuclear technology it had jointly developed with its World War II allies, the United Kingdom and Canada. Most significantly, the Act ruled ...

. He passed on information on atomic reactors, but unlike Klaus Fuchs (who was arrested in 1950) he knew little of weapon design. Nunn May is a major character in the 2003 novel ''The Cloud Chamber'', by Clare George, a fictional account of Cambridge physicists in the 1930s which centres on the scientific excitement of the interwar years contrasted with the vexing moral questions faced by scientists during World War II. The main character is a fictional physicist and pacifist who studied and worked at Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory with Nunn May before the war. George's acknowledged inspiration for the story was her grandfather, a real-life physicist whose true story follows several of the particulars of her character, Walter Dunnachie.

Notes

References

External links

Files at National Archives, London (released 2007)
''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

'', 24 January 2003 * ttp://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4201883 Central Criminal Court depositions – CRIM 1/1774 {{DEFAULTSORT:Nunn May, Alan Admitted Soviet spies World War II spies for the Soviet Union British people convicted of spying for the Soviet Union British spies for the Soviet Union English physicists Experimental physicists British metallurgists British nuclear physicists Semiconductor physicists 1911 births 2003 deaths Manhattan Project people Communist Party of Great Britain members Nuclear weapons program of the Soviet Union People educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham Alumni of Trinity Hall, Cambridge Academics of King's College London People from Kings Norton People associated with the nuclear weapons programme of the United Kingdom British expatriates in Ghana