Boris Borisovich Davison was born 7 October 1908 in Vasilsursk, Gorky Oblast, Russia.
[2][1] In 1943 he moved to Canada to work under George Placzek at the Montreal Laboratory of the joint British-Canadian atomic energy project.
[2][1][3] In October 1945 he briefly joined the British Mission at Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, part of the Manhattan Project which had just developed the atom bomb.
[2][1] In 1953 his security clearance was revoked by the British government because his parents still lived in the Soviet Union, potentially putting Davison at risk of blackmail.
[7][4] Davison then emigrated to Canada in 1954, where he took up a position at the computation centre at the University of Toronto.