Go to Hachette Book Group home

Search

Site Preferences

Show prices in:

Promotion

Use code CYBER2024 for 30% off sitewide + free shipping over $30

By clicking “Accept,” you agree to the use of cookies and similar technologies on your device as set forth in our Cookie Policy and our Privacy Policy. Please note that certain cookies are essential for this website to function properly and do not require user consent to be deployed.

Half-Life

The Divided Life of Bruno Pontecorvo, Physicist or Spy

Half-Life Open the full-size image

Contributors

By Frank Close

Formats and Prices

Price

$20.99

Price

$26.99 CAD

Format

Format:

  1. ebook $20.99 $26.99 CAD
  2. Hardcover $29.99 $37.50 CAD

This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around February 3, 2015. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.

Also available from:

It was at the height of the Cold War, in the summer of 1950, when Bruno Pontecorvo mysteriously vanished behind the Iron Curtain. Who was he, and what caused him to disappear? Was he simply a physicist, or also a spy and communist radical? A protege of Enrico Fermi, Pontecorvo was one of the most promising nuclear physicists in the world. He spent years hunting for the Higgs boson of his day — the neutrino — a nearly massless particle thought to be essential to the process of particle decay. His work on the Manhattan Project helped to usher in the nuclear age, and confirmed his reputation as a brilliant physicist. Why, then, would he disappear as he stood on the cusp of true greatness, perhaps even the Nobel Prize?

In Half-Life, physicist and historian Frank Close offers a heretofore untold history of Pontecorvo’s life, based on unprecedented access to Pontecorvo’s friends and family and the Russian scientists with whom he would later work. Close takes a microscope to Pontecorvo’s life, combining a thorough biography of one of the most important scientists of the twentieth century with the drama of Cold War espionage. With all the elements of a Cold War thriller — classified atomic research, an infamous double agent, a possible kidnapping by Soviet operatives — Half-Life is a history of nuclear physics at perhaps its most powerful: when it created the bomb. Physics at perhaps its most powerful: when it created the bomb.

Genre:

On Sale
Feb 3, 2015
Page Count
400 pages
Publisher
Basic Books
ISBN-13
9780465044870

You May Also Like

The Impossible Man
The Impossible Man $32.00 $42.00 CAD
Einstein's Tutor
Einstein's Tutor $30.00 $40.00 CAD
Going Fast and Fixing Things
Going Fast and Fixing Things $30.00 $39.00 CAD
Gene Machine
Gene Machine $18.99 $23.99 CAD
In the Blood
In the Blood $29.00 $37.00 CAD

Frank Close

About the Author

Frank Close, OBE, FRS, is a particle physicist and an emeritus professor of physics at the University of Oxford. He is the author of over two dozen books, including Elusive, Half-Life, and The Infinity Puzzle. He lives near Oxford, UK.

Learn more about this author