THE EVENTFUL LIFE OF HOUTERMANS,FRITZ

“Why are you interested in this man?” they usually ask me. I don't know the answer. It just happened. Maybe my interest in the life of Fritz Houtermans started when I began coming across repeated references in various books to a gifted German physicist who emigrated to the USSR after Hitler came to power, was arrested by the Soviets in 1937 as a German spy and then was extradited back to Germany in 1940, only to return to occupied Kharkov two years later with the conquering Nazis. © 1992, American Institute of Physics. All rights reserved. Fleeing Hitler, he went to England in 1933. Soon, driven by idealism and English cooking, he moved to the Soviet Union. Eventually the NKVD shipped him back to the Gestapo. Through it all he managed to do ground-breaking physics. © 1992, American Institute of Physics. All rights reserved.