Arthur Wynn was many things in his long life: wartime RAF boffin, radar developer, civil servant, medical researcher, expert on mine safety, terrorism and maternal nutrition. He also helped to undermine the political career of the late Sir Keith Joseph.

But the role he spoke of least — and will now be best remembered for — is as Agent Scott, recruiter for the Soviet KGB.

Arthur Henry Ashford Wynn was born on January 22, 1910, the son of a medical professor. He was educated at Oundle School and Trinity College Cambridge, where he read natural sciences, maths and economics, before studying for the bar at Lincoln’s Inn.

Like other Soviet recruits, he had an outstanding academic record, winning a scholarship to Trinity and excelling on the rugby field. “He knows how to fight,” the Oundle magazine reported in 1924.

Wynn was in Germany in 1933 when the Nazis took power. In an eerie parallel to the life of Kim Philby, he married a German communist, Lieschen Ostrowski, to enable her to escape Hitler’s Germany.

When that marriage was dissolved, he married a student communist at Oxford, Peggy Moxon. In the meantime he had made contact with the KGB, and most importantly Theodore Mally, codenamed “Stephan”, a KGB controller.

During the war, Wynn worked on navigational technology for Bomber Command and early radar. But in 1941, he was still actively providing information to the KGB as Agent Scott.

In 1948, after the nationalisation of the coal industry, he became interested in mining conditions and was appointed director of mining safety research at the Ministry of Fuel and Power.

In later life, he turned to the study of family policy, most notably the nutrition of mother and babies. With his wife, he turned out numerous papers, books and articles aimed at politicians.

One such paper — arguing that too many babies were being born to mothers with low IQs — was latched on to by Sir Keith Joseph, who made a speech that veered close to a call for eugenic breeding. His leadership hopes never recovered. Wynn, a lifelong supporter of the Labour Party, was doubtless delighted.

The KGB archives have so far offered no indication of when (or if) Wynn severed his links with the KGB. The start of his relationship with Soviet espionage is well-documented. Its progress and conclusion remains a mystery.

Wynn died in September 2001, at the age of 91, exactly 60 years after his last known contact with the KGB.

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