Trinity - The treachery and pursuit of the most dangerous spy in history: The Edinburgh Connection

Prof Frank Close from the University of Oxford will join us for the first General Interest Seminar of semester 2.

All students and staff are welcome to attend.  Undergraduate students are particularly encouraged to attend.

Please arrive at 16.30 for tea and cakes outside Lecture Theatre A.  The seminar will commence at 17.00.

Abstract: Trinity was the codename for the test explosion of the atomic bomb in New Mexico on 16 July 1945. Frank Close tells the story of the bomb's metaphorical father, Rudolf Peierls; his intellectual son, the atomic spy and Edinburgh physics student Klaus Fuchs; and the ghosts of the security services in Britain, the USA and USSR. Frank will reveal how  new insights about Fuchs from MI5 files in the National Archives, and documents of the FBI and the KGB. MI5 records show how Fuchs used a trip from Edinburgh to make his first contacts with Soviet intelligence. He has also overthrown a misconception lasting 60 years that J Edgar Hoover was central to Fuchs' exposure: the real hero was probably GCHQ.