It was a case of what the scientist saw. Or how, in just a few short hours, a Canadian physicist became an American citizen.
It happened one day in 1970 when Allan Bromley, then a nuclear expert from Yale University and later science adviser to the first President George Bush, spied something that put his colleagues all in a panic.
"I had been shown the deepest, darkest secret known in the United States out at the Weapons Flats in Nevada," the farmer's son from the Ottawa Valley told the Toronto Star in 1992. "And just about the time it was all finished, someone said, 'Oh, my God, Bromley is not a citizen.' "
A judge was hurriedly sent out from nearby Las Vegas and Dr. Bromley was sworn in on the spot so that "it became legal for me to know that deep, dark secret." To this day, no one, including his brother John, knows much about what Dr. Bromley laid his eyes on that day.
"It is true that he was being shown something and that someone realized there had been a security breach," says John Bromley. "He never did give me all of the details."
The renowned nuclear physicist's rise to the pinnacle of American science began under circumstances considerably less odd than the event that saw him suddenly become an American.
"He always liked science as a youngster, he was always experimenting with things," recalls John Bromley. "We had a lot of scientific equipment at our high school and one day at noon he got a concoction going and we heard the bang all the way down the street . . . it took the paint off the old tin ceiling in the room.
"Whenever he did something, he wanted to know why it did what it did. He was very inquisitive," says John, who with Allan, two other brothers and a sister, grew up on a family farm about 12 kilometres east of Pembroke, Ont. Today, John Bromley runs a farm and sawmill not far away near Westmeath, Ont.
Later in life, Allan Bromley's aptitude for science would elevate him to a leadership role in the national and international science and science-policy communities. In a statement made earlier this month, Mr. Bush said: "In my view he was a truly great leader in the U.S. scientific community. I know I felt privileged to have him at my side when I was president.''
As Mr. Bush's top science adviser from 1989 to 1993, Dr. Bromley pushed for sizable increases in money for scientific research in a race to keep U.S. manufacturing ahead of Japan and Germany. He supported the expansion of the high-speed network that became the Internet, and, after years of questioning the science behind global warming, he was credited with persuading Mr. Bush to attend a summit on the issue.
Serving as the president's science and technology adviser and as chairman of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Dr. Bromley was seen as one of the most influential science advisers ever. "He gave the president his best advice rather directly. That made him a superb adviser on hard issues," John Sununu, Mr. Bush's former chief of staff, told the New York Times.
Dr. Bromley was an early champion of what he called the "data superhighway," now known as the Internet. "Ten years from now," he said in 1991, "I'd like it to be widely available and looked upon like the telephone network."
Mr. Sununu said that Dr. Bromley "understood its value" both for global communication and exchanging information.
"Everyone in the area was very proud of his achievements," said says family friend Marie Zettler, a former editor at the weekly newspaper in Cobden, Ont., who had interviewed Dr. Bromley three times over the years. "It was my understanding that George Bush senior worked very closely with Dr. Bromley and took what he said very seriously.''
After attending high school in Westmeath and Pembroke, he earned bachelor's and master's degrees at Queen's University and a doctorate from the University of Rochester in 1952. After graduating from Queen's, he worked for five years as a senior research officer and head of a nuclear-physics section at Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., at the Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories at Chalk River, Ont.
Canada is where he and some of his AECL colleagues of the day would have preferred to stay. The prize, as far as they were concerned, was an assortment of vacancies that had cropped up at the University of Toronto's physics department. Indeed, things looked truly promising until they learned that the "chairman of the physics department at Toronto had stopped off at Glasgow on his way back from a summer vacation and had hired people there to fill all the positions," Dr. Bromley said in a 1992 interview. "And so we all decided we were going to jump ship."
He joined the Yale faculty as associate professor of physics in 1960 and was founder and director of the A. W. Wright Nuclear Structure Laboratory at Yale from 1963 to 1989. He carried out pioneering studies on both the structure and dynamics of atomic nuclei and was considered the father of modern heavy ion science, a major field of nuclear science. From 1972 until 1993, he held the Henry Ford II professorship in physics at Yale, and from 1970 to 1977, he served as chair of the Yale Physics Department. Dr. Bromley was dean of engineering at Yale from 1994 to 2000.
"Allan Bromley was a great scientist and a great leader. In three successive careers, he built our physics department, served the nation with distinction, and thoroughly revitalized engineering at Yale. With intelligence, energy, and enthusiasm he inspired countless students and colleagues," said Richard Levin, president of Yale. "Where he led, we willingly followed."
Dr. Bromley was hailed as an outstanding teacher; from 1965 to 1989, his lab at Yale graduated more doctoral students in experimental nuclear physics than any other institution in the world. Dr. Bromley published more than 500 papers in science and technology, and edited or authored 20 books.
As president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world's largest scientific society, and of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, the world co-ordinating body for that science, he was one of the leading spokesmen for international scientific co-operation.
He received numerous honours and awards, including, in 1988, the U.S. National Medal of Science, the highest scientific honour awarded by the United States. He held 32 honorary doctorates from universities worldwide.
"What made him tick? It was his drive and his work ethic," says John Bromley. "Whether he was coiling hay or working around the farm, no matter what he chose to do you knew he was going to do his best.''
After moving to the United States, Dr. Bromley continued to return to Westmeath, sometimes as often as twice a year, where he would stay at Nangor Resort and take the time to attend church and visit with family and friends.
Occasionally, business brought him home. In 1994, he did a star turn as a guest speaker at the University of Ottawa's program of research in international management and economy. His speech revealed a certain degree of doubt about his southerly career moves. "It's a little sad," he told his audience. "I think that a great many of us at various times in our careers would have liked to have stayed in Canada and I think we could have made significant contributions."
He lamented that Canada's science and technology had long been on a starvation diet. "It is rather strange that having one of the best educational systems in the world, Canada has not been prepared to invest in the activities that will create opportunities for large numbers of the people that emerge from its educational system."
Even when they decided to stay, engineers and scientists often could not perform research and development if their employer was foreign-owned, he said. "Canada has been prepared to leave the companies who are headquartered outside of Canada with the freedom to do their research and development at their head office and not here. This has cost the country dearly."
Allan Bromley was born on May 14, 1926, near Westmeath, Ont. He died of a heart attack on Feb. 10 in New Haven, Conn., after teaching a class at Yale University. He was 78. He is survived by his wife, Victoria Sutton; son, David; daughter, Lynn; stepchildren, Summer Stephanie Sutton and Remington John Sutton; brother John; and sister Dawn Anderson. He was pre-deceased by his first wife, Patricia.