Klaus Fuchs - Early Life

Early Life

Klaus Fuchs was born in Rüsselsheim, Grand Duchy of Hesse, the third of four children to Lutheran pastor Emil Fuchs and his wife Else Wagner. Fuchs' father was later a professor of theology at Leipzig University. He became an active Quaker in Germany, England, and in the United States. Fuchs' grandmother, mother, and his older sister eventually committed suicide (his mother in c.1932, his sister in 1939 to avoid capture by the Nazis), while his younger sister was diagnosed as schizophrenic.

Fuchs attended both Leipzig University and Kiel University, and while at Kiel became active in politics. He joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany and, in 1932, the Communist Party of Germany. In 1933, after a violent encounter with the recently installed Nazis, he left for France and was then able to use family connections to flee to Bristol, England, arriving September 24, 1933. He earned his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Bristol in 1937, studying under Nevill Mott, and took a DSc at the University of Edinburgh while studying under Max Born. His paper on quantum mechanics, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society in 1936, helped win him a teaching position at Edinburgh the following year.