the McMahon Act. He passed on information on atomic reactors, but unlike Klaus Fuchs (who was arrested in 1950) he knew little of weapon design. Nunn May is a major character in the 2003 novel The Cloud Chamber, by Clare George, a fictional account of Cambridge physicists in the 1930s which centres on the scientific excitement of the interwar years contrasted with the vexing moral questions faced by scientists during World War II. The main character is a fictional physicist and pacifist who studied and worked at Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory with Nunn May before the war. George's acknowledged inspiration for the story was her grandfather, a real-life physicist whose true story follows several of the particulars of her character, Walter Dunnachie. See also Atomic spies Cold War espionage Nuclear espionage Soviet atomic bomb project Soviet espionage in the United States Notes References Further reading The Traitors by Alan Moorehead (1952)The Meaning of Treason by Rebecca West (1949, 1952)The Atom Bomb Spies by H. Montgomery Hyde (1980, Hamish Hamilton London) Scientist Spies by Paul Broda (2011) External links Files at National Archives, London (released 2007) "Alan Nunn May – Nuclear scientist who served six years for passing atomic secrets to the Russians in the Second World War", The Times'', 24 January 2003 Central Criminal Court depositions – CRIM 1/1774 Admitted Soviet spies World War II spies for the Soviet Union British people convicted of spying for the Soviet Union British spies for the Soviet Union English physicists Experimental physicists British metallurgists British nuclear physicists Semiconductor physicists 1911 births 2003 deaths Manhattan Project people Communist Party of Great Britain members Nuclear weapons program of the Soviet Union People educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham Alumni of Trinity Hall, Cambridge Academics of King's College London People from Kings Norton People associated with the nuclear weapons programme of the United Kingdom British expatriates in Ghana