[10] In the summer of 1931 however, Eltenton visited a friend he had known at Cambridge, Yulii Khariton, at the Institute of Problems of Chemical Physics in Leningrad.
[16] This was a happy time, despite primitive conditions compared with England, and she writes admiringly of the socialist society they experienced as it developed, with its community spirit, sexual equality and people's local democratic participation in decisions relating to work and public services.
[6] He was also a trade union activist for the Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists and Technicians at Shell,[21] and was at a meeting where Robert Oppenheimer encouraged the formation of a section at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
[22] In 1939, with the beginning of the Second World War he contacted the British Embassy to volunteer, but was told his work for the oil company was better use of his talents.
It was there that Ivanov raised the possibility of atomic research being shared between the US and the USSR, and suggested three scientists who might be prepared to do so, if discretion could be assured.
[26] He first took a senior position at the Shell physics research laboratory, but after investigation by MI5 was moved to an area solely concerned with refinery operations.