Theodore Hall

Theodore Alvin Hall (October 20, 1925 – November 1, 1999) was an American physicist and an atomic spy for the Soviet Union, who, during his work on US efforts to develop the first and second atomic bombs during World War II (the Manhattan Project), gave a detailed description of the "Fat Man" plutonium bomb, and of several processes for purifying plutonium, to Soviet intelligence. His brother, Edward Hall, was a rocket scientist who worked on ICBMs for the United States government.

Early years
Theodore Alvin Holtzberg was born in Far Rockaway, New York City to a devout Jewish couple, Barnett Holtzberg and Rose Moskowitz. His father was a furrier, and the Great Depression affected his business significantly. When his father's business became unable to support the household, the family moved to Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan.

Even at a young age, Theodore showed an aptitude in mathematics and science, mostly being tutored by his elder brother Edward. After skipping three grades at Public School 173 in Washington Heights, in the fall of 1937, Hall entered the Townsend Harris High School for gifted boys. After graduation from high school, he was accepted into Queen's College at age 14 in 1940, and transferred to Harvard University in 1942, where he graduated at age 18 in 1944.

From Holtzberg to Hall
In the fall of 1936, despite the protests of their parents, Edward, his brother, changed both his and Theodore's last name to Hall in an effort to avoid anti-Semitic hiring practices.

Manhattan Project


At the age of 19, and through the recommendation of John Van Vleck, Hall was among the youngest scientists to be recruited to work on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. At Los Alamos Hall handled experiments for the implosion device ("Fat Man") and helped determine the critical mass of uranium for "Little Boy".

Theodore Hall later claimed that he became concerned about the consequences of an American monopoly of atomic weapons after the war. He was especially worried about the possibility of the emergence of a fascist government in the United States. Could such a government use nuclear weapons to dominate the world?

While on a vacation in New York City in October 1944, he visited the CPUSA offices, instead of the Soviet Consulate (where he feared FBI surveillance), in order to locate a contact to pass information on the Manhattan Project along to the Soviet Union. After a few recommendations, he met Sergey Kurnakov, a military writer for Soviet Russia Today and Russky Golos, and handed him a report on the scientists who worked at Los Alamos, the conditions at Los Alamos, and the basic science behind the bomb. Saville Sax delivered the same report to the Soviet Consulate a few days later under the guise of inquiring about relatives still in the Soviet Union. The two eventually met with Anatoly Yatskov, the New York station chief, who later transmitted the information to the NKVD using a one-time pad cipher. After officially becoming informants for the Soviet Union, Hall was given the code-name MLAD, a Slavic root meaning "young", and Sax was given the code-name STAR, a Slavic root meaning "old".

Kurnakov reported in November 1944: "Rather tall, slender, brown-haired, pale and a bit pimply-faced, dressed carelessly, boots appear not cleaned for a long time, slipped socks. His hair is parted and often falls on his forehead. His English is highly cultured and rich. He answers quickly and very fluently, especially to scientific questions. Eyes are set closely together; evidently, neurasthenic. Perhaps because of premature mental development, he is witty and somewhat sarcastic but without a shadow of undue familiarity and cynicism. His main trait - a highly sensitive brain and quick responsiveness. In conversation, he is sharp and flexible as a sword.... He comes from a Jewish family, though doesn't look like a Jew. His father is a furrier; his mother is dead.... He is not in the army because, until now, young physicists in government jobs at a military installation were not being drafted. Now, he is to be drafted but has no doubts that he will be kept at the same place, only dressed in a military uniform and with a correspondingly lower salary."

Unbeknown to Hall, Klaus Fuchs, a Los Alamos colleague, and others still unidentified, were also spying for the USSR; none seems to have known of the others. Harvard friend Saville Sax acted as Hall's courier, until spring of 1945 when he was replaced by Lona Cohen. Igor Kurchatov, a brilliant scientist and the head of the Soviet atomic bomb effort, probably used information provided by Klaus Fuchs to confirm corresponding information provided earlier by Hall. Despite other scientists giving information to the Soviet Union, Hall was the only known scientist to give details on the design of an atomic bomb.

Career after Los Alamos
In the autumn of 1946, Hall left Los Alamos for the University of Chicago, where he finished out his Master's and Doctoral degrees in Physics, met his wife, and started a family. He continued feeding information to the Soviet Union about a new generation of nuclear weapons being developed at the University of Chicago. After graduating he became a biophysicist. In Chicago he pioneered important techniques in X-ray microanalysis, until, in 1962, he became unsatisfied with his equipment and the techniques available to him. He then moved to Vernon Ellis Cosslett's electron microscopy research laboratory at Cambridge University in England. At Cambridge he created the Hall method of continuum normalization, developed for the specific purpose of analyzing thin sections of biological tissue. He remained working at Cambridge until he retired at age 59 in 1984.

Hall later became active in obtaining signatures for the Stockholm Peace Pledge.

Death
On November 1, 1999, Theodore Hall died at the age of 74, in Cambridge, England. Although he had suffered from Parkinson's disease, it was not what ultimately killed him, succumbing instead to renal cancer.

FBI investigation
Until the release of the Venona decrypts in July 1995, nearly all of the espionage regarding the Los Alamos nuclear weapons program was attributed to Klaus Fuchs. Hall was questioned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in March 1951 but wasn't charged. Alan H. Belmont, the number-three man in the FBI, decided that information coming out of the Venona project would be inadmissible in court, as hearsay evidence, and so its value in the case was not worth compromising the program.

Statements in 1990s


The Venona project became public knowledge in 1995.

In a written statement published in 1997, Hall came very close to admitting that the accusations against him were true, although obliquely, saying that in the immediate postwar years, he felt strongly that "an American monopoly" on nuclear weapons "was dangerous and should be avoided":

He repeated this near-confession in an interview for the TV series Cold War on the Cable News Network in 1998, saying: