Alsos was a scientific intelligence mission launched by the Allies in the autumn of 1943 to
determine the progress of German research on the atom bomb. With the suspense of a thriller
Goudsmit recounts the circumstances leading up to the mission the methods its participants
used to do their scientific sleuthing and the reaction of the German scientists on the day the
atom bomb fell on Hiroshima. With a new introduction by David Cassidy About the Author: Samuel
Goudsmit was born in The Netherlands and in 1925 he and fellow student George Uhlenbeck
discovered electron spin. In 1927 he emigrated to the U.S. working at the University of
Michigan and later at MIT until being detailed to the War Department to participate in the
Alsos Mission. He served as a senior scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory from 1954 to
1970 and was the founder of Physical Review Letters.
