> On 1 September 1950, in the middle of a holiday in Italy, Pontecorvo abruptly flew from Rome to Stockholm with his wife and three sons without informing friends or relatives. On 2 September he was helped by Soviet agents to enter the Soviet Union from Finland.

It's always fascinating to see otherwise bright and competent characters end up making such bewildering decisions outside of their professions. In Pontecorvo's case, he condemned his young children to spending the rest of their lives in Soviet Russia - at a time when Stalin was still in power, no less.

It seems his son Gil eventually became a successful physicist in his own right, but I couldn't find out how the others fared. Based on my own experiences with communism, I can't imagine it was preferrable to life in the West.