The Spy, the Human Computer, and the H-bomb

On May 28, 1946, a US Patent was filed for a hydrogen bomb by Klaus Fuchs and John von Neumann. From the article:

"One of the most enigmatic documents in early Cold War nuclear history is the so-called Fuchs-von Neumann patent. It was Los Alamos secret patent application number S-5292X, “Improvements in method and means for utilizing nuclear energy,” and dates from April 1946. It is mentioned, cryptically, often with heavy redaction, in many official histories of the hydrogen bomb, but also has recently surfaced as an object of historian’s speculation. The most obvious reason for its notoriety comes from its authors, but its importance.

The co-inventors were Klaus Fuchs and John von Neumann. Fuchs was a brilliant German physicist who was later exposed as the most important of the Soviet spies at Los Alamos. Von Neumann was a brilliant Hungarian mathematician and physicist, a “ringer” they brought in especially to help manage the explosive lens program, and is generally considered one of the smartest people in the 20th century. As one of the major contributors to the invention of modern computing, it was often remarked in his time that he was much smarter than the machines he was developing — he could do crazy-complicated math in his head without breaking a sweat. And he was a vehement anti-Communist at that — a man who spoke openly about the benefits of instigating thermonuclear war with the Soviets. So on the face of it, it’s an improbable match-up — the Soviet spy and the anti-Communist human computer. Of course, viewed in context, it’s not so improbable: they were both talented physicists, both worked at Los Alamos, and nobody at the lab knew Fuchs was a spy."