Frank Close Books

Forty or so years ago, three physicists - Peter Higgs, Gerard 't Hooft, and James Bjorken - made the spectacular breakthroughs that led to the world's largest experiment, the CERN Large Hadron Collider. Played out against a backdrop of high politics, low behaviour, and billion dollar budgets, this is the story of their work and its implications.

The memo landed on Kim Philby's desk in Washington, DC, in July 1950. Three months later, Bruno Pontecorvo, a physicist at Harwell, Britain's atomic energy lab, disappeared without a trace. When he re-surfaced six years later, he was on the other side of the Iron Curtain...One of the most brilliant scientists of his generation, Pontecorvo was privy to many secrets: he had worked on the Anglo- Canadian arm of the Manhattan Project, and quietly discovered a way to find the uranium coveted by nuclear powers. Yet when he disappeared MI5 insisted he was not a threat. Now, based on unprecedented access to archives, letters and surviving family members and scientists, award-winning writer and physics professor Frank Close pieces together an answer to whether Pontecorvo's defection did indeed bring an end to a life of spycraft -and exposes the truth of a man irrevocably marked by the advent of the atomic age and the Cold War...

Drawing on years of conversations with Higgs and others, Close illuminates how an unprolific man became one of the world's most famous scientists. Close finds that scientific competition between people, institutions, and states played as much of a role in making Higgs famous as Higgs's work did

Neutrinos are as near to nothing as anything we know, and so elusive that they are almost invisible. Frank Close tells the story of the neutrino, explaining their growing significance, and looking at how neutrino astronomy is at the threshold of enabling us to look into distant galaxies and to finding echoes of the Big Bang.

"Trinity" explores the test explosion of the atomic bomb in New Mexico on July 16, 1945, and delves into the lives of Rudolf Peierls, his intellectual son Klaus Fuchs, and the security services of Britain, the USA, and the USSR. Set against the backdrop of pre-war Nazi Germany, World War II, and the Cold War, it reveals how Peierls welcomed Fuchs into his family and laboratory, only to face betrayal. The narrative details Fuchs's transformation into a spy, his motivations, and the sensitive information he relayed to Soviet contacts during his time with Peierls at the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos in 1944. Author Frank Close, a distinguished nuclear physicist, uniquely combines scientific explanation with espionage. After returning to Britain undetected in August 1946, Fuchs became pivotal in the UK's nuclear weapons development. Close captures the tense atmosphere at Harwell, the nuclear physics lab near Oxford, and the complex relationships among key figures. He presents new evidence regarding the critical VENONA decryptions and illustrates how MI5 and the FBI's errors gradually tightened the noose around Fuchs. The Soviet Union's first nuclear explosion in August 1949 shocked the world, and by 1951, a US Congressional Committee labeled Fuchs as the most damaging spy in history. This account provides a comprehensive look at these pivotal events and the tragic figure at their center.

Originally published: Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Antimatter is a weird opposite to matter that will destroy everything it touches; it could be the ultimate source of power or weapon of mass destruction. This book explains what it is and what it can do

In Particle A Very Short Introduction , best-selling author Frank Close provides a compelling and lively introduction to the fundamental particles that make up the universe. The book begins with a guide to what matter is made up of and how it evolved, and goes on to describe the fascinating and cutting-edge techniques used to study it. The author discusses particles such as quarks, electrons, and the neutrino, and exotic matter and antimatter. He also investigates the forces of nature, accelerators and detectors, and the intriguing future of particle physics. This book is essential reading for general readers interested in popular science, students of physics, and scientists at all levels.About the Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

In this Very Short Introduction Frank Close describes the historical development of nuclear physics, our understanding of the nucleus, how nuclei form, and the applications of the field in medicine. Exploring key concepts, Frank Close shows how nuclear physics brings the physics of the stars to Earth.

Luzifers Vermächtnis ist die bravourös geschriebene Einführung in die Grundfrage der Kosmologie. Anhand erstaunlicher Beispiele konfrontiert uns Frank Close mit dem sonderbaren Phänomen, daß dem so unglaublich ausbalancierten Universum, seinen Gesetzen und Geschöpfen eine eigentümliche Unregelmäßigkeit zugrunde liegt. Mit dem Urknall bildete sich erstmals Materie. Es entstanden die ersten, positiv geladenen Teilchen und gleichzeitig auch ihr jeweiliges Spiegelbild, die negativ geladenen Antiteilchen. Treffen sie zusammen, zerstören sie sich gegenseitig. Mit anderen Worten: Bruchteile nach ihrer Entstehung vernichteten sich Materie und Antimaterie gleich wieder selbst. Der symmetrische Anfang des Universums hätte also gleich wieder zu seiner Selbstauslöschung führen müssen. Doch irgend etwas ging bei diesem Vorgang schief. Denn zweifelsohne gibt es ja Materie, gäbe es doch sonst weder das Universum noch die so exakt aufeinander eingespielten Naturgesetze, geschweige denn den Menschen. Was aber hat dazu geführt, daß die Materie das Rennen gemacht hat? Und wo ist die ganze Antimaterie geblieben, wenn es doch zu jedem Materieteilchen das entsprechende Antiteilchen gibt? Woher rührt also die merkwürdige Asymmetrie in der kosmischen Ordnung, die unsere Existenz offenbar erst ermöglicht? Sollte die göttliche Schöpfung erst dank eines kleinen „Fehlers“, durch Luzifers Erbe, ihre Perfektion erhalten haben?