Half Life: The disappearance of Bruno Pontecorvo – with Frank Close

In 1950, Bruno Pontecorvo, one of Britain's brightest atomic physicists, disappeared without trace. He re-surfaced six years later: in the USSR. In this talk, based on unprecedented access to archives, letters, surviving family members and scientists, Frank Close exposes the truth of Pontecorvo’s life behind the Iron Curtain, and reveals why he went so suddenly. Frank Close is a particle physicist, and author. He is Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, and has previously been Head of the Theoretical Physics Division at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and Head of Communications and Public Education at CERN. He has written several books, including Antimatter, Neutrino and The very short introduction to particle physics. https://twitter.com/closefrank Check out our website: http://www.rigb.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Ri_Science YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheRoyalInstitution And Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TheRoyalInstitution