'Ways out of the Arms Race": The Second International Scientists' Congress

During the 1980's, Maurice Wilkins spent a significant amount of time promoting and campaigning on disarmament and development issues. While maintaining his long running membership of British Pugwash, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), British Society for Social Responsibility in Science (BSSRS) and the World Federation of Scientific Worker's (WFSW), he also became honorary President of the Food and Disarmament International (FDI) organisation and an active member of scientists' against nuclear arms (SANA). It was the later that led to his involvement in the 'Ways out of the Arms Race' Second International Scientists' Congress held at Imperial College London, on the 2-4 December 1988. The conference aim was for imminent scientists from across the globe to discuss papers on nuclear, chemical and biological disarmament. It succeeded in doing so with the added benefit of providing political pressure by mobilising its attendance to protest on two concurrent political events: the abduction and imprisonment of the Israeli nuclear plant technician, Dr Mordechai Vanunu and the poison gas attacks by the Iraqi Army in Halabja in 1988. Evidence of the petitions and demonstrations are recorded in the papers of Maurice Wilkins which includes candid replies to him from representatives of the Israeli and Iraqi governments.


Campaign relating to Dr Mordechai Vanunu

Dr Mordechai Vanunu, was a former nuclear technician at the Negev Nuclear Research Center from 1976-1985. In 1986, whilst in Sydney, Australia, he met a Sunday Times journalist and revealed knowledge of the Israeli nuclear weapons programme before accompanying the journalist to London. It was during his time in London that the Israeli Government decided to capture Vanunu and hatched a plan to remove him from UK territory by getting an undercover Mosad agent to pretend to be an American tourist, named Cindy who Vanunu agreed to accompany to Rome. In Rome he was drugged and freighted back to Israeli where he was imprisoned for treason and confined for 18 years, including eleven years of solitary confinement.

 During the Congress, a demonstration was organised to the Israeli Embassy in London where a petition would be handed in asking for clemency for Mr Vananu. A significant number of the delegates signed the petition including fellow Nobel Prize winners, Dorothy Hodgkin and Joseph Rotblat.

The following summer, Wilkins received a reply from the Israeli Government's Ministry of Justice:

 

Campaign condemning gas attacks on Kurdish civilians

The Halabja massacre is now well known event due in part to the build up to the Second Iraq war and the fall of Sadam Hussain's regime. However, at the time of their occurence the international response was ambiguous with some international media coverage and western governmental officials siding with the official Iraqi line that no poison gas attacks were used against the Kurdish people. Wilkins sent a letter to the Iraqi ambassador in London and recieved a detailed reply with a number of attachments. The letter provides evidence of the divided media coverage and general lack of facts available allowing for passionate denial of any use of chemical weapons and a dismissal of the claims as part of an anti-Iraqi conspiracy. 

Example of the Second International Scientists' Congress petition against the Iraqi government after the chemical attack on the Kurdish city of Halabja.

  

Maurice Wilkins and social responsibility in science: In his own words

In the previous post, I outlined some of the organisations that Maurice Wilkins was involved with that promoted social responsibility in science. In this post, I would like to cover Maurice Wilkins own thoughts on this subject and how they developed and changed in his lifetime.

“The Crisis in Science”

It was during the sixties that Maurice Wilkins entered the public debate regarding the value and implications of science and society. His 1962 Nobel Prize gave him the freedom and authority to “consider the wider role of science in life”. In his autobiography, he states how he found the global political situation made it increasingly difficult to continue his “quiet, steady biological work”.  His awareness of the risks posed by the Cold War and the dangers of weapons of mass destruction is evident in his opening address to the “Social Impact of Modern Biology” conference held at the Friend’s House, London in 1970:

 “The crisis in science today has not only direct bearing on the question of our survival but is of deep significance to our fundamental beliefs and at value judgements”

The newspaper, the "Journal American" reporting Maurice Wilkins' Nobel Prize award. Other news that day includes: an escalation in military tension between the US and the USSR over Cuba ( in what was later known as the Cuban Missile Crisis), US spacecraft Ranger 5 lifted off on its lunar mission while also in the news the first law suit over the prescription of thylidomide to pregnant mothers resulting in deformed children was also under way. 

Underlining this crisis was a fundamental change in scientific thought, as Wilkins went on to elaborate:

“Yet even [though] scientists continue to work undisturbed, their attitudes to their work have, since the war, significantly changed. Although many scientists regard their work unquestioningly, in general there has been a perceptible change. The main cause is probably the Bomb: scientists no longer have their almost arrogant confidence in the value of science. At the same time non-scientists openly question the value of science.”

He, like a significant number of his colleagues on the Manhattan Project, regretted his involvement with the development of the Atomic Bomb. He felt that the bomb was a product of a compartmentalized pure science divorced from any concerns of ethics and responsibility. Wilkins resolved that this division should be removed to make science “better related to man’s wider hopes and needs: dehumanizing aspects of science would be reduced, science would be a force for changing and improving society and social responsibility would be implicit in the nature of science itself”

These sentiments regarding the crisis in science were widespread and echoed by other speakers at the “Social Impact of Modern Biology” conference, including the French geneticist, Jacques Monod, and the biologist, Jacob Bronowski. The historian of science Jon Agar, in his 2008 article in the Journal of the British Society for the History of Science, on the change in science in the sixties views the crisis in science as a combination of three pervasive 'waves' in the scientific community: the first 'wave' produced scientific experts and public divergent opinions; the second ‘wave’ was the creation of organisations and movements (such as the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science) that could act as a forum to debate and question scientific practice, and the final wave reflected the pervasive attitude of 'inward inquiry' that questioned the concept of scientific knowledge and its value to society.

Wilkins considered the development of the Bomb and chemical and biological weapons were an abuse of science, but believed that it could be redeemed by shifting its purpose back to the needs of society.

“The man in the white coat knew best”

In the years following the 1970 conference, teaching on the new “Social Impact of the Biosciences” course at King’s College London gave Wilkins an opportunity to develop and share his views.  In a 1998 lecture, Wilkins reflected on the attitudes of the scientific community in 1970:

“…In 1970 many scientists saw science as giving certainty and truth; without science we would live largely in ignorance and superstition. Such scientists also had a simple faith that science applied would inevitably give us a better life. Roughly speaking, the scientist in the white coat knew best. That simple faith has considerably decreased. An important factor in this has been change in public attitudes to science; science has been criticised and open anti-science attitudes have increased. People are now less likely to believe ‘the man in a white coat knows best’ (in any case it is rather more likely than before that the scientist is a woman). It is important to realise that modern criticism of science has often arisen from the work of scientists e.g. on problems of pollution, climate change and environmental damage. Without that scientific work we would be barely aware that the problems existed. Also, solving these considerable problems depends considerably on continuing research. Similarly, medical studies have stimulated growth in broader, ‘mind-body  approach to patients rather than concentration on treatment with drugs. Although science has become increasingly part of people’s lives, the people have tended to become more critical of the effects of science in the modern world.“

Wilkins’ attitude to science was influenced by his research in the historical, philosophical and sociological ideas that the course explored. On the development of the concept of pure science, he wrote:

“During the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century pure and applied science were not regarded as separable. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) believed the value of science (and in fact its very truth) derived from the beneficial application of science. But in the early 19th century the snobbish demands of educating the upper classes in universities, especially in Germany, required that university science be freed from its links with ‘vulgar; industry (e.g. soap boiling) and made socially respectable as a pure academic discipline like classics or philosophy. Pure scientists became proud of the idea that their science might have no application at all. The idea of pure scientific knowledge became associated with the idea of absolute knowledge which could be separated from the way it was obtained and from the way it might be applied and was therefore value-free, (and based only on unbiased observation and logic).”

One important element to Maurice Wilkins’ attitude to social responsibility in science is his belief in the social conditioning of science, which suggests that as science is a human activity it would be conditioned by the social and cultural environment where it is carried out. This is important because “science dominates our whole culture, not just as a result of its direct applications, but because it influences general thinking and attitudes to life”. Therefore, being able to judge the nature and value of scientific knowledge has become ever more desirable. His own understanding bridged both the objective and relative understanding of knowledge:

“There are two processes, somewhat opposed, operating in science: there is the essential element of objectivity and rationality recognised by tradition, and without which science could not have built up an enormous set of coherent knowledge. On the other hand scientists’ thinking is always to an extent influenced by cultural forces and prejudice. The ‘logic’ of science can go far in ruling out inappropriate ways of thinking, thus enabling science to lead us to a partial view of the truth. The debate about social conditioning of science is about the relative importance of the objective rationality of science and the subjective conditioning of thought. This will vary with the situation.”

Wilkins’ key example of social conditioning of science was the work of the Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko (1898-1976), whose own genetic theories were promoted in the USSR from 1928 to 1964 instead of the universally accepted Mendelian genetics. Lysenkoism was encouraged as it politically and philosophically was in keeping with Stalinist Russia. For Wilkins, it was the suppression of dissent and the central dogmatism that was the most corrosive aspect of the Lysenko affair. Yet the same charge he suggests (but not in such extreme fashion) can be made in those in the contemporary scientific world:

"while we condemn this we should recognise somewhat similar, thought not so extreme, dogmatism when some molecular biologist pronounces that human beings are ‘nothing but’ molecular machinery or when the psychologists take it for granted that IQ gives us a measure of intelligence on which we can base educational policy. Scientific knowledge need not be unavoidable truth. We should respect it but at the same time recognise its limitations, we should not jump to conclusions about its wider significance and we need to be very cautious in drawing parallels between animals and humans. “

 

To conclude…

“There can be no complete certainties in science but there can be a continuing process of enquiry and exploration"

Maurice Wilkins and social responsibility in science

In previous posts, I have concentrated on Wilkins' scientific career and in particular to his work on DNA and the double helix. However, in this post I would like to explore the "social responsibility" aspect of the project. This phrase has become associated with Maurice Wilkins due to his links to the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science (BSSRS) and the "Social Impact of the Biosciences" course at King's College London. Yet they also nicely summarise Wilkins' own attitude to the role of science in society and the need for a broader understanding of science and awareness of its implications. The following post will explore this general theme.
 Cambridge and the Second World War

While Maurice Wilkins was an undergraduate at St John's College, Cambridge, he became a member of the Cambridge Scientists' Anti-War Group. The group, led by the eminent x-ray crystallographer John Desmond Bernal, researched the protection of British civilians in the likely event of aerial bombardment in any forthcoming war. They examined the possibility of poison gas attacks and incendiary bomb damage. Wilkins investigated whether a single incendiary bomb could set fire to the top of a building, burn through, and destroy an entire building, burning through many floors (as seen in the photograph on the right). He ignited an incendiary bomb on a platform of conventional floorboards. Whilst the bomb easily ignited and caused much violent flashing and burning, it only caused only caused minimal damage since the fire burned up and not down. The results disappointed the group, who believed the experiments could have been a powerful propaganda tool exposing the evil of German air attacks in Republican Spain and the resultant devastation of the town of Guernica. Yet the results of the experiments played out in real life: as Wilkins saw the same effect during heavy bombing in Birmingham several years later:

"In the street where I live the roof of the doctor's house was burning, and the hoses drenching the outside of the roof did not seem effective. I went inside and saw the ceiling under the burning roof was intact, and I broke a hole in it to put a jet of water directly into the roof space. But when I had finished making the hole I could see through it that the fire had already been put out. I felt embarrassed that I had damaged the doctor's ceiling..." 

It was his move to study luminescence at Birmingham University in the Physics department under Mark Oliphant that would lead Wilkins to work on the development of radar and later the atomic bomb at Berkeley, California. His attitude to the bomb at the time was broadly supportive since its development was seen as crucial against continued Nazi aggression. Yet after the bomb's use in Hiroshima and Nagasaki he experienced growing unease about the consequences of such a weapon of mass destruction and realised that he wanted no further part in it. It was after the war whilst working at St Andrews University that, unbeknownst to him, he would catch the attention of MI5 due his subversive attitude towards the atom bomb. Wilkins was a keen supporter of sharing nuclear secrets for the improvement of international relations with the USSR. These views reported to MI5 and eventually led to his official monitoring (see previous post for details:  http://dnaandsocialresponsibility.blogspot.com/2010/08/maurice-wilkins-accused-of-spying-by.html ).

1960s and Political Activism

 

During the fifties and early sixties, he concentrated on his research on the structure of DNA but did not abandon his interest in the broader responsibilities of the scientist. During his Lasker Award speech in 1960, he emphasised that the importance of the double helix should be considered not only in terms of scientific knowledge but also in relation to the human benefit that may be created by applications of that knowledge. The winding down of the DNA work at King's and the award of the Nobel Prize gave him the freedom to return to the problems that captivated him as an undergraduate at Cambridge: science and its relation to society. In 1968, Wilkins became a prominent member of the public campaign to get the government biological research laboratory at Porton Down declassified and was one of the eight Nobel Prize winning scientists who wrote to the Prime Minster , Harold Wilson demanding that the work should be made public. It was through this network of scientists and other academics that Wilkins got involved in the group that became known as the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science (BSSRS) and was its President from 1969 to 1991. The society's importance and standing in the debate on science and values shown by the list of initial members as shown on the left.

Bogside Artists' mural of a boy running from CS gas in Derry

The aims of the Society were to stimulate an awareness of the social significance of science and the corresponding social responsibilities both individually and collectively, and to draw public attention to the implications and consequence of scientific development. BSSRS held its inaugural meeting in April 1969, attended by three hundred delegates and soon had a national body of a thousand members. The Society became a vocal advocate against the use of chemical and biological weapons in particular the use of CS gas. BSSRS led its own research into the gas' toxicity and organised its own team of doctors and social scientists to visit Londonderry, where the British Army had used the gas extensively. The Society gave evidence of the potential hazards to the government enquiry, the Himsworth Committee on the toxicity of CS Gas in 1969. BSSRS also launched pioneering projects on the effects of pollution such as the hazards associated with dumping toxic waste off the Cumberland Coast by the Atomic Energy Authority.

 

The largest event that BSSRS organised was an international conference on the "Social Impact of Modern Biology" held in London on November 1970. Over three days an average of seven hundred people per day gathered at the meeting that included talks from Maurice Wilkins, James Watson, Jacques Monod, Jacob Bronowski, David Bohm and Stephen and Hilary Rose. The conference acted as a forum to discuss the implications of scientific research with fellow scientists and the public and included such controversial subjects as "test tube babies" and questioning scientific objectivity. As the following letter from Maurice Wilkins to one of the participants, Professor Richard Doll makes clear the conference was largely a success. Many young scientists said that "it made them think" and it led to a successful book of the discussions of the conference, that has recently been republished ("The Social Impact of Modern Biology" edited by Watson Fuller). What typified the meeting was the discussion and the occasional clash (hence the mentioned abuse) between the "New Left" young radical scientists and the older more established scientists.

  

   

BSSRS never again achieved the same level of global coverage, but continued to have a presence especially through the work of local groups and its publication, Science for People.  The 1970 conference also led to the development of the "Social Impact of the Biosciences" course at King's College London that still runs to this day. Maurice Wilkins summed up its overall impact in his autobiography, "The Third Man of the Double Helix" (2003):  

[BSSRS] helped scientists to see there was no sharp distinction between pure and applied science, and that it paved the way for a broader, interdisciplinary approach to the problems of science and society".

 A few examples of the elaborate cover art and issues raised by Science for People

Maurice Wilkins: A brief biography

Maurice Wilkins (1916-2004): New Zealand born Nobel Prize winning biophysicist

The Nobel Prize winning biophysicist is chiefly known for his experimental work that led to Watson and Crick discovering the correct double helical structure of DNA. The importance of Wilkins, and that of the King’s biophysics department in the discovery of DNA has been somewhat overshadowed by the dynamic duo from Cambridge ( even to the extent that the publisher of Wilkins’s autobiography thought to mention in choosing the title, “The Third Man of the Double Helix”). This is a disservice to both pioneering DNA work at King’s which paved the way for its discovery and which as an institute spent the next decade after the discovery confirming the validity of the Watson-Crick model.

His early life and education:

 Maurice was born in Pongaroa, New Zealand in December 1916 where he lived happily until the age of six before his father, a medical practitioner, moved his family to England in 1923. Whilst living in Birmingham, Wilkins began to display his characteristic ingenuity and craftsmanship as he built his own telescopes and microscopes to pursue his interests in astronomy and optics. He won a scholarship to St John’s College, Cambridge in 1935 to study physics but due to both his eclectic tastes in physics and his preoccupation with university politics he obtained a low second degree in 1938. Although disappointed by the result, Wilkins’s eclecticism and good fortune allowed him to join his former tutor, Mark Oliphant, at Birmingham. Oliphant had been impressed by Wilkins’s ability and interest in thermoluminescence and phosphorescence and set him up as the research student for a certain, John Randall- whom Wilkins would enjoy a fruitful, if not fractious thirty year collaboration. Wilkins made rapid progress in Birmingham obtaining his PhD in luminescence in 1940.

He was subsequently recruited into the Ministry of Home Security and Aircraft Production to work on the improvement of radar screens. In 1944, Wilkins followed Oliphant to the University of California at Berkeley, to work on the Manhattan project. Although Maurice played a small role within the project he became increasingly concerned about the ethical implications of atomic weapons and like many of his colleagues turned away from atomic physics to pursue biophysics inspired to some extent by Erwin Schrodinger's book, What is Life? (1944). 

King’s College London: 

After returning from California after the war, Maurice decided to rejoin Randall’s research group at first at St Andrew’s University in 1945. This group then moved in 1946 to King’s College, London where Randall was appointed the Wheatstone professor of physics and had obtained funding from both the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Rockefeller institute for a new Biophysics Research Unit. This new MRC unit was fairly unprecedented with interdisciplinary work within science not being a common occurrence. Maurice was integral in the early years of the institution with innovative work in adapting microscopes to use optical, ultraviolet and infra-red light. He turned to studying DNA, on Randall’s bequest in 1950. Working closely with the PhD student, Raymond Gosling and the mathematician, Alec Stokes they started to produce the first crystalline diffraction patterns for DNA. This formative period convinced Wilkins that DNA had a clear crystalline symmetry and could be readily pursued. It was whilst at a conference in Naples in 1951, that Wilkins showed a slide of their results that excitedly transfixed a previously bored and distracted Jim Watson as he realised that the structure of DNA was possible to study.

  Later that year, Wilkins was joined by Rosalind Franklin to work on X-ray diffraction experiments on DNA. The need for a professional crystallographer was essential for progress on the structure but due to misunderstanding over each others role the two fell out splitting the laboratory where Franklin and Gosling would continue working on the X ray diffraction of the A Crystalline Signer DNA whilst Wilkins and Alec Stokes (and later Herbert Wilson too) would work on the “B” form though without access to the Signer which was a remarkably pure form of extracted calf thymus DNA. Franklin and Gosling produced enhanced the quality of the X-ray diffraction photos thanks largely to Franklin’s expertise in crystallography with the vital “photo 51” being taken in May 1952 as a consequence. The teams effectively worked in isolation and it was not until 1953 when Franklin had left for Birkbeck College that any unified King’s response occurred. By then it was too late. Watson and Crick cracked the structure of DNA in March 1953. Somewhat unfortunately,the spur for Jim Watson's new attempt at model building had been seeing the marvellously clear helical pattern of "photo 51" and deciding to discard experimental data pointing to three chains and opt for two.

 Yet, to Maurice’s credit rather than throw in the towel he and the department of King’s continued to work on DNA. The process of checking the validity of the model was required especially with the constant bombardment of competing models appearing during the fifties and sixties. The work was painstaking and the refinement of the Watson - Crick Model took seven years. The toil was however worth it with the Albert Lasker Award being given to Maurice, Watson and Crick in 1960 and a general indication that a Nobel Prize would be soon on the cards.  

With Science comes Great (or Social) Responsibility:

Whilst the DNA aspect of this project is self evident, the ‘social responsibility’ requires explanation. This phrase embodies Maurice’s dual pursuit of a scientific profession but with a social consciousness. This distinct direction was present from his Cambridge student days where his anti-war activities led to him investigating the effect of incendiary bombs (the devastation that they ensured had only just been witnessed during the Spanish Civil War). Despite, and in some ways because of his work on the Manhattan project, Maurice became an ardent opponent of the proliferation of nuclear weapons and a member of organisations such as CND and Pugwash. In 1968, his opposition to biological and chemical weapons led him into contact with Hilary and Stephen Rose and together they set up the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science with Maurice serving as President. The initial aims of the society were to challenge the belief that science was a ‘pure knowledge’ that only caused harm through its application and therefore ridding the scientist any mental anguish on the ethical implications of this research. This reductionist approach to science was abhorrent to Maurice who believed the practice of science to be embedded with human values and should therefore be made to be held accountable for its impact on society. His passionate belief that the broader implications of science should be taught led to the creation of the “Social impact of the biosciences” which is run to this day in the Biophysics department here at King’s.

Fortieth Anniversary celebration of the discovery of the structure of DNA (1993). Pictured (left-right), Raymond Gosling, Herbert Wilson, Maurice Wilson, Alexander Stokes.

Maurice Wilkins accused of spying by MI5

  In a case of unusual coincidence, Maurice Wilkins has just today hit the headlines thanks to the publication by the National Archives of Security Service files on his activities. Wilkins was investigated between 1951-1954 by MI5 having been tipped off by the FBI that an Antipodean scientist, working on the Manhattan Project, had revealed information to American communist party members, including the "New Mexico set up". What is fascinating about these documents is that they both reveal aspects of Maurice's post-war lifestyle and the remarkable paucity of evidence that Wilkins could have been a spy. 

The investigation against Wilkins began from a tip-off by the FBI that an Antipodean scientist had been informing Communists Party members from Brooklyn, New York and they transferred this scientific material to the USSR. Of the nine antipodeans involved only a few were believed to be possible candidates: Eric Burhop and Maurice Wilkins. Burhop was the strongest candidate due to communist political sympathies and was subject to a much longer investigation. The consideration of Wilkins only became an issue due to the inconclusiveness of the Burhop investigation and also prompted by a report by an informant from St Andrews University. Wilkins returned from the United States soon after the war to a biophysics position at St Andrews University, it was here that the informant met Wilkins and reported his "strong left leaning tendencies". It was his vehement defence of the British physicist, Alan Nunn May who had been accused of passing on nuclear secrets that caused the most alarm. Wilkins believed that passing on secrets connected to atomic energy was justifiable and that scientists were free to use their own knowledge how they wanted. Whilst, this opinion was seen by the informant as a potentially treasonous remark it should be noted that there was an opinion with a number of other atomic scientists, such as the famous Danish scientist, Niels Bohr, that the atomic secrets should be shared with the international community.

A group photograph at a nucleic acid meeting in the United States (c.1955) with Wilkins standing on the left hand front row.

The investigation seems fairly low-key on the whole as the MI5 did not want to alert Maurice Wilkins of their activities. Instead, they began monitoring his movements and communications. The bulk of the documentation in the files are collected copies of received post, e.g. letters to estate agents, passport renewals and bank statements and letters from his family. The authorities did however approach Sir Harold Himsworth, the Secretary of the Medical Research Council, for an assessment of Wilkins and were provided with a written report on him by an anonymous informant who was at contact with him at King's. A previous report from an MI5 informant who met him at Birmingham before the war, described him as a "very queer fish" but whose associations were broadly left wing socialist rather than communist. The latter report described how his politics had mellowed and he now "come into College every morning with a copy of the Times, which he had apparently read on the journey". It goes on to describe him as a "caricature of a scientist" but "who recognises his own failings and tries to get over the difficulty with consultations with psychoanalysts".

The impression of Wilkins in the paper are of a high principled, left-leaning shy young scientist who was dedicated to his work and friends. That he was seen as a "caricature of a scientist" was not lost on Wilkins reflecting in a later talk on the perception of science at Goldsmith's College in 1980 on how his outside appearance embodied the stereotypical scientist. Yet, such an assessment would be a gross disservice to him as he above all believed that the boundaries of a scientist were artificial and its relationship to art and spirituality should be encouraged.What is ironic about this assessment of Wilkins are in relation to his politic sympathies- from the sixties onwards Wilkins become as active politically as his scientific career, mainly in the form as President of the British Society for the Social Responsibility in Science (BSSRS) which was regarded as radical left wing organisation in the seventies.Wilkins's political activism saw his personal participation in the campaign to get the biological research work at Porton Down declassified and gave evidence to the Himsworth enquiry on the detrimental effects of CS gas in Northern Ireland. His advocating for nuclear disarmament in the seventies and eighties led to a number of high profile public appearances lobbying for their discontinuation, most famously of all meeting Pope John Paul II in December 1980 on the subject.

Postscript:

In an earlier draft section of Maurice Wilkins's autobiography discussed the Nunn May and Klaus Fuchs espionage cases. He points out that although having never met Nunn May their paths had crossed- both had been educated in Birmingham; studied Physics at Cambridge University and during the war he was invited, as a war worker, to stay at the Nunn May residence, south of Birmingham to avoid the heavy bombing. Wilkins sympathised with Nunn May as  he "like other high principled and independently minded young men I knew, he would have been indignant with Churchill for not keeping his promise and for having concealed from the Russian the very existence of the Atom Bomb Project". Yet the most interesting passage is Maurice reflecting on his own prospects as a spy:

"Looking back to the time I worked on the Manhattan Project in Berkeley during the war I am glad to say that no one ever approached me for secret information. It would have been foolish if they had, because I was one of the least experienced scientists and had no detailed knowledge except in relation to my particular problem. In any case, to have worked as a secret agent like Nunn May or Fuchs would not have appealed to me at all. It would have been better to have openly discussed with colleagues the need for the Allies to share information with the Soviet Union".