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The spy who flunked it: Kurt Gödel's forgotten part in the atom-bomb story

Robert Oppenheimer’s isn’t the only film-worthy story from the nuclear age. Kurt Gödel’s cameo as a secret agent was surprising — and itself a bomb.

Concerned by the pace at which nuclear-science discoveries were being made in Germany, Szilard persuaded Albert Einstein in August 1939 to write a letter to then-president Franklin D. Roosevelt, warning him of the risk of an atomic bomb in Adolf Hitler’s hands. In the summer of 1939, after reading an article in the scientific journal DieNaturwissenschaften by Siegfried Flügge — later a leading member of Uranverein, the ominous ‘Uranium Club’ that was behind the German effort to build a nuclear bomb — Thirring had learnt enough to feel that the US government should be warned. Correction 20 March 2024: Owing to a late editorial change, the originally published text of this Essay made an erroneous statement about the nature of the continuum hypothesis, and stated mistakenly that Hans Thirring had lost contact with former colleagues.

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