Harry Gold
American chemist (1910–1972)
Harry Gold (born Henrich Golodnitsky, December 11, 1910 – August 28, 1972) was an American laboratory chemist who was convicted as a courier for the Soviet Union passing atomic secrets from Klaus Fuchs, an agent of the Soviet Union, during World War II. Gold served as a government witness and testified in the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted and executed in 1953 for their roles. Gold served 15 years in prison.
Born in Bern, Switzerland, to parents from the Russian Empire, Gold immigrated to the US with his parents as a child at the age of four and settled in Philadelphia. During the Great Depression, he found work and finished his degree in chemistry at night. He returned to work as a clinical chemist after release from prison.
Early life
Heinrich Golodnitsky was born on December 11, 1910, in Bern, Switzerland to Samson and Celia (Ominsky) Golodnitsky, both Jewish immigrants from what is now Ukraine and was then part of the Russian Empire. Samson had grown up in Smila, where his father was a successful merchant. He was sent to Switzerland for additional schooling, as opportunities for Jews were limited in Russia, but he was influenced by reading Leo Tolstoy and chose to go into woodworking. He became a carpenter. Henrich's mother, Celia, first emigrated from central occupied Ukraine (annexed lands of the Russian Empire) as a teenager to Paris, where she studied dentistry.
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This entry incorporates text from “Harry Gold” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.