During his career with the UK Atomic Energy Authority he made important contributions to the development of the British thermonuclear bomb and nuclear power engineering, especially in the field of isotope separation.
[2] After the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938, Kronberger fled to Britain, arriving at Victoria Station with £10 and his school reports.
[1] In 1944 he moved to Birmingham University, joining Francis Simon's team in the Tube Alloys Project, the British programme to develop an atomic bomb.
[9] He then moved to the newly formed Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, where he continued to work on the separation of the isotopes of uranium, initially by gaseous diffusion and then using high speed centrifuges.
In two years, he was promoted to head of the Capenhurst laboratories, and then in 1958 he succeeded Leonard Rotherham as director of research and development of the industrial group of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority.
[18] In 1951 he married Joan Hanson, a scientific assistant at Harwell, a widow with a young son, Paul; together they had two daughters, Zoë and Sarah.