British Nobel prize winner was under MI5 investigation: Archives
26 Aug 2010
A British Nobel prize winning scientist had come under MI5 investigation for being a possible atom spy who had passed US nuclear secrets to the Russians.
The security service files released yesterday at the National Archives reveal that New Zealand born professor Maurice Wilkins, had, during the second world war worked on building the hydrogen bomb for the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico.
In 1951, the FBI told MI5 that one of the nine Australian and New Zealand scientists was in contact with members of the American Communist party.
Wilkins was placed under surveillance, with his post opened and movements tracked, but the only evidence against him came from a junior MI5 officer who had been with Wilkins at St Andrews University at the time the first of the atom spies, Dr Allan Nunn May, was uncovered in 1946.
Wilkins was personally acquainted with May and had defended his action as justifiable.
The investigation was discontinued in 1953 when his colleagues insisted May no longer harboured any left wing sympathies. MI5 cleared Wilkins when they caught hold of the real spies including Klaus Fuchs, who was arrested in 1950.
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