Rudolf Heinz Pose (10 April 1905 – 13 November 1975) was a German nuclear physicist who worked in the Soviet atomic bomb project. He did pioneering work which contributed to the understanding nuclear energy levels. He worked on the German nuclear energy project Uranverein. After World War II, the Soviet Union sent him to establish and head Laboratory V in Obninsk. From 1957, he was at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia. He settled in East Germany in 1959, and he held teaching posts and directed nuclear physics institutes at Technische Hochschule Dresden. Education Pose studied physics, mathematics, and chemistry at the University of Königsberg, the University of Munich, the University of Göttingen, and the University of Halle-Wittenberg. He received his doctorate at Halle, in 1928, under the Nobel laureate in Physics Gustav Hertz. Career Early years From 1928 Pose was an unsalaried assistant and from 1930 a regular assistant to the physicist Gerhard Hoffmann, who was doing research in nuclear reaction measurements. In 1929, Pose studied the nuclear reactions of aluminum nuclei bombarded with alpha particles. His experiments showed the existence of discrete energy levels in the nucleus. His pioneering work described for the first time the effect of resonance transformation in a nuclear process. On the basis of these works and his Habilitation, Pose was awarded a teaching contract for atomic physics in 1934. He continued to study these nuclear reactions in other light (low atomic number) nuclei through the 1930s. In 1939, he was awarded an unscheduled/adjunct (außerplanmäßige) professorship at Halle. During World War II, Pose was delegated to various organizations to carry on nuclear research and development activities. From 1940, he worked for the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft's Institut für Physik (KWIP, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics) on the German nuclear energy project Uranverein. He worked with Werner Maurer on proof of spontaneous neutron emission of uranium and thorium. From 1942, he was at the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt, where Abraham Esau was President, and also held the title of Plenipotentiary (Bevollmächtiger) for Nuclear Physics - as such, he controlled German nuclear research. Some of the research was carried out at the Versuchsstelle (testing station) of the Heereswaffenamt (HWA, Army Ordnance Office) in Gottow; Kurt Diebner, was director of the facility. The testing station is where Pose and Ernst Rexer compared the effectiveness of neutron production in a paraffin-moderated reactor using uranium plates, rods, and cubes. Internal