Leó Szilárd: A Forgotten Father of the Atomic Bomb

http://priceonomics.com/leo-szilard-a-forgotten-father-of-the-atomic-bomb/

22 10 11 years ago

krampian2• 11 years ago

One of my favorite texts back in my college days was The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski. USA folks may not be familiar with this. It was actually more of a polished transcript of his TV series, which had aired in the UK and some other countries (including Malta, where it was required reading for getting into college in fact). Leo Szilard is a familiar name from that text - he certainly gets plenty of airtime in there.

rootbear• 11 years ago

The Ascent of Man series was shown in the US on public television and I was a huge fan. I had forgotten that Szilard was featured in it. I'd really like to go back and re-watch that series.

krampian2• 11 years ago

I believe it's all on Youtube these days...

cafard• 11 years ago

Forgotten by whom?

andy_wrote• 11 years ago

I was going to say - I believe historians regard "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" as the definitive work on the subject, and Szilárd appears in the first sentence of that book. (I've only read the first chapter or two, been meaning to get around to this someday...)

Like this article, the book opens with a description of Szilárd thinking about a nuclear chain reaction while walking about London.

gjkood2• 11 years ago

One of the very best non-fiction books that I have ever read.

gjkood2• 11 years ago

Read "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes. Leo Szilard plays a very prominent part in the history of the bomb.

elektromekatron• 11 years ago

One of the original Martians.

- The universe is vast, containing myriads of stars, many of them not unlike our Sun. Many of these stars are likely to have planets circling around them. A fair fraction of these planets will have liquid water on their surface and a gaseous atmosphere. The energy pouring down from a star will cause the synthesis of organic compounds, turning the ocean into a thin, warm soup. These chemicals will join each other to produce a self-reproducing system. The simplest living things will multiply, evolve by natural selection and become more complicated till eventually active, thinking creatures will emerge. Civilization, science, and technology will follow. Then, yearning for fresh worlds, they will travel to neighboring planets, and later to planets of nearby stars. Eventually they should spread out all over the Galaxy. These highly exceptional and talented people could hardly overlook such a beautiful place as our Earth. - "And so, " - Fermi came to his overwhelming question, - "if all this has been happening, they should have arrived here by now, so where are they? " - It was Leo Szilard, a man with an impish sense of humor, who supplied the perfect reply to Fermi's rethoric: - "They are among us," - he said, - "but they call themselves Hungarians."

http://mek.oszk.hu/03200/03286/html/tudos1/martians.html

The bit in there about Hollywood is also amusing:

The American word "movie" probably derived from the Hungarian "mozi. " Cynics says that Hungarians created America's Hollywood before other Hungarians less destructively created America's A-bomb.

hehaho• 11 years ago

Surely the American word "movie" is simply an abbreviation of "moving picture"?

It's true that Hungarian "mozi" (meaning "movie theater" or "the movies", not "[a] movie") is itself short for "mozgóképszínház" = "moving-picture theater" but I don't think there's any a priori reason to assume that the two derivations are correlated.

bediger4000• 11 years ago

It looks like Szilard always had moral qualms about atomic bombs (http://www.dannen.com/chronbio.html).

The "military head" of the Manhattan Project, General Groves appeared to have really disliked Szilard: Groves wanted to have Szilard "interned for the duration of the war" as "an enemy alien" (http://www.doug-long.com/szilard.htm)

I'll bet that Szilard's iconoclasm and reaction to authority means that his contributions get downplayed. Can't have a non-team-player elevated to hero status, now can we?

Leó Szilárd: A Forgotten Father of the Atomic Bomb

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