Tag archives: Soviet Union

Reflecting on – Frank Close (centre) discusses the life of the Italian physicist Bruno Pontecorvo, who defected to the Soviet Union in 1950.

By Matin Durrani

Like all good publications, Prospect has a strapline about itself – “the leading magazine of ideas”. Physics World is also about ideas, although sadly our magazine, great though it is, doesn’t have adverts for Cartier watches, Embraer executive jets or the Taj Exotica Resort & Spa in the Maldives as Prospect does. Clearly, some people with ideas have more money to spend than others.

I was kindly invited last week by the deputy editor of Prospect, Jay Elwes, to an event he hosted at the magazine’s headquarters in central London. The event featured the University of Oxford physicist Frank Close, who has just published a new book on the life and times of Bruno Pontecorvo. Close was on hand to discuss the key themes of the book, which is entitled Half Life: the Divided Life of Bruno Pontecorvo. Elwes described the attendees as a “small, high-powered group”, including as it did Pauline Neville Jones, the former chair of the UK’s Joint Intelligence Committee and Jonathan Evans, the former director-general of the British security service MI5.

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