ACCUSED SCIENTIST’S CAREER

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26030, 6 February 1950, Page 7

ACCUSED SCIENTIST’S CAREER

The first charge brought against Fuchs alleges that in 1947 Fuchs, “for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State, communicated to a person unknown, information relating to atomic research which was calculated to be, or might be, directly or indirectly, useful to an enemy.” The second charge alleges a similar disclosure to a person unknown, in the United States, in February, 1945. Fuchs, it is understood, holds the rank of deputy-chief scientific oncer at Harwell/He was one of -ie British representatives at the atomic research talks with the United States and Canada at Harwell in September, 1949. In Washington, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced that Fuchs’s arrest in London was a result of inquiries by the F. 8.1. into leakages of atomic bomb secrets to Russia.

The F. 8.1. said that Fuchs had worked on the Allies’ atomic project

from late in 1943 until June. 1946. His place in Britain’s atomic establishment was comparable with that held during the war by Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, who directed the Los Alamos bomb laboratories in New Mexico. Officials said that the F. 8.1., in investigating the suspected relay of atomic secrets to Russia, had checked on trips which Fuchs made to the United States during and after the war, as an accredited British visitor. While in the United States, Fuchs, whose father is a college professor living in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany, worked for the office of the British Ministry of Supply in New York. Later he was assigned to Washington, then to the atomic plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the Los Alamos laboratories, where the first atomic bomb was produced. He made trips to Mexico and Canada before returning to England. He went to the United States again in 1947 to attend the atomic conferences with American officials.