AUSTRALIAN scientists involved in the building of the atomic bomb during World War II were investigated in an MI5 probe into Soviet espionage.
According to secret Whitehall files made public, all Australian and New Zealand scientists that worked on the joint US-British Manhattan Project to make the A-bomb came under suspicion.
In 1951, the FBI informed MI5 they had received a report through a “reliable informant” that an Australian scientist on the team had been “in close touch with Communist Party members in Brooklyn, New York, and through them with the highest Communist officials in the United States”.
The scientist was said to have passed on everything he knew about the program, including “the set-up in New Mexico” – a reference to the main development establishment at Los Alamos.
In response, MI5 investigated the Australian and New Zealand scientists involved in the project, including Kiwi Nobel laureate Professor Maurice Wilkins.
Professor Wilkins was awarded the prize in 1962 along with Francis Crick and James Watson after revealing the double helix structure of DNA, the molecule which carries the genetic “life code”.
Professor Wilkins – who worked at King’s College, London during the early 1950s – was put under surveillance, with his mail opened and movements monitored.
But apart from a report from 1946 from a junior MI5 officer who said that he had been “extremely vehement” in speaking out in defence of the convicted atom spy Alan Nunn May, they quickly concluded there was no evidence against him and the investigation was dropped.
One informant told MI5 that if Professor Wilkins had left wing sympathies in the past, there was little sign of them now.
“He comes to the college every morning with a copy of The Times, which he has apparently read on the journey,” the informant said.
“He is a caricature of a scientist in that he seems to be both incapable of dealing with ordinary human situations, and apparently uninterested in them.”
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