Mathematician Jacob Bronowski was labelled a security risk and a possible Communist by British secret agents, newly released documents show.

Despite official misgivings as to his loyalty, he held a post with the Ministry of Home Security during World War II and was appointed an official investigator to the Hiroshima bombings.

“The Min. of Home Security employed him in 1943 because they could not get anyone else with his special qualifications. He was employed in their Research Dept. but they told us they had taken special safeguards regarding access to secret documents,” says a 1946 letter in his security service file, released by the UK’s National Archive.

Bronowski, who was perhaps most famous to the general public for his BBC TV series The Ascent of Man, eventually moved to the United States.

His daughter Lisa Jardine, a leading historian at Queen Mary, University of London, told the BBC that she believed his security service file had probably prevented him getting the top UK academic job he had desired.

“It reminds me of the Stasi in East Germany,” she said. “It would be comical if it wasn’t so serious for a man’s life.”

Image: excerpt from National Archive file.