Alan Nunn May (sometimes Allan){{refn|Nunn May's first name is sometimes spelled Allan, with two l'''s, but both the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and the Encyclopædia Britannica use Alan.|group=n|name=Latour}} (2 May 1911 – 12 January 2003) was a British physicist and a confessed and convicted Soviet spy who supplied secrets of British and American atomic research to the Soviet Union during World War II. Early life and education Nunn May was the youngest of four children of Walter Frederick Nunn May, a brassfounder, and Mary Annie, née Kendall. He was born in Bedruthan, Park Hill, Moseley, Birmingham, and educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham. As a scholarship student at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, he achieved a first in physics, which led to doctoral studies under Charles Ellis and lectureship at King's College London. Career Early communist ties Nunn May joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in the 1930s and was active in the Association of Scientific Workers. The Cambridge Five spy ring member Donald Duart Maclean was also at Trinity Hall during an overlapping period. World War II During World War II, Nunn May initially worked on radar in Suffolk and then with Cecil Powell in Bristol on a project that attempted to use photographic methods to detect fast particles from radioactive decay. James Chadwick recruited him to a Cambridge University team working on a possible heavy water reactor. The team was part of the British Tube Alloys directorate that was merged into the American Manhattan Project, the successful effort to create a nuclear weapon. In January 1943, the Cambridge team, including Nunn May, was transferred to the Montreal Laboratory, which was building a reactor at Chalk River, near Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Nunn May's Canadian position ended in September 1945, and he returned to his lecturing post in London. Soviet espionage He had let his membership of the Communist Party lapse by 1940, but at Cambridge, when he saw an American report mentioning that Germany might be able to build a dirty bomb, he passed that on to a Soviet contact. In Canada, he was approached by Lieutenant Angelov of the GRU (Soviet military intelligence) for information on atomic research. He continued his espionage by secretly supplying small samples of the isotopes uranium-233 and 235. The courier of the samples was not informed of the danger of radiation, developed painful lesions and needed regular blood transfusions for the rest of