George Koval
| George Koval | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Allegiance | Soviet Union |
| Service | GRU |
| Operation(s) | Manhattan Project Infiltration |
| Award(s) |
 Hero of Russia |
| Codename(s) | Delmar |
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| Birth name | George Abramovich Koval |
| Born |
December 25, 1913 Sioux City, Iowa, United States |
| Died | January 31, 2006 (aged 92) Moscow, Russia |
George Abramovich Koval (Russian: Жорж (Георгий) Абра́мович Кова́ль; IPA: [ˈʐorʐ (ɡʲɪˈorɡʲɪj) ɐˈbraməvʲɪtɕ kɐˈvalʲ], Zhorzh Abramovich Koval, December 25, 1913 – January 31, 2006) was an American who acted as a Soviet intelligence officer for the Soviet atomic bomb project. According to Russian sources, Koval's infiltration of the Manhattan Project as a Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye (GRU) agent "drastically reduced the amount of time it took for Russia to develop nuclear weapons."
Koval was born to Russian Jewish immigrants in Sioux City, Iowa, US. Shortly after reaching adulthood he traveled with his parents to the Soviet Union to settle in the Jewish Autonomous Region near the Chinese border. Koval was recruited by the Soviet Main Intelligence Directorate, trained, and assigned the code name DELMAR. He returned to the United States in 1940 and was drafted into the US Army in early 1943. Koval worked at atomic research laboratories and, according to the Russian government, relayed back to the Soviet Union information about the production processes and volumes of the polonium, plutonium, and uranium used in American atomic weaponry, and descriptions of the weapon production sites. In 1948, Koval left on a European vacation but never returned to the United States. In 2007 Russian President Vladimir Putin posthumously awarded Koval the Hero of the Russian Federation decoration for "his courage and heroism while carrying out special missions".
George Koval's father, Abram Koval, left his home town of Telekhany in Belarus to immigrate to the United States in 1910. Abram, a carpenter, settled in Sioux City, Iowa, which at the turn of the 20th century was home to a sizeable Jewish population of merchants and craftsmen. He and his wife Ethel Shenitsky Koval raised three sons: Isaya, born 1912; George (or Zhorzh), born Christmas 1913; and Gabriel, born 1919.
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