Everything about Leo Szilard totally explained
Leó Szilárd (
Hungarian:
Szilárd Leó,
February 11,
1898 –
May 30,
1964) was a
Hungarian-
American physicist who conceived the
nuclear chain reaction and worked on the
Manhattan Project. He was born in
Budapest under the
Austro-Hungarian Empire, and died in
La Jolla,
California.
Early life
Szilárd was born in Budapest at the time of the
Austro-Hungarian monarchy before
World War I as the son of a
civil engineer. From 1908-1916 he attended
Reáliskola in his home town. He was enrolled as an engineering student at
Budapest Technical University in 1916 but had to join the
Austro-Hungarian Army in 1917 as officer-candidate where he was honorably discharged at the end of the war. In 1919 he resumed engineering studies at Budapest Technical University but soon decided to leave Hungary because of the rising
antisemitism under the
Horthy regime which led to the introduction of a
numerus clausus for Jewish students at Hungary's universities. He continued engineering studies at
Technische Hochschule (Institute of Technology) in Berlin-Charlottenburg. He soon changed to
physics there and took physics classes from
Einstein,
Planck, and
Max von Laue. His
dissertation on
thermodynamics Über die thermodynamischen Schwankungserscheinungen (On The Manifestation of Thermodynamic Fluctuations) in 1922 was praised by
Einstein and awarded the highest honor. In 1923 he received the doctorate in physics from the
Humboldt University of Berlin. He was appointed as assistant to von Laue at the University of Berlin's Institute for Theoretical Physics in 1924. In 1927 he finished his
habilitation and became a
Privatdozent (instructor) in Physics at University of Berlin. During his time in Berlin he was working on numerous technical inventions (1928 German
patent application on the
linear accelerator, 1929 German patent application on the
cyclotron, since 1926 work with Einstein on the construction of a
refrigerator without moving parts (US patent number 1,781,541 on November 11, 1930).
Developing the idea of the nuclear chain reaction
In 1933 Szilárd fled to London to escape Nazi persecution, where he read an article written by
Ernest Rutherford in
The Times which rejected the possibility of using atomic energy for practical purposes. Although
nuclear fission hadn't yet been discovered, Szilárd was reportedly so annoyed at this dismissal that he conceived of the idea of the nuclear chain reaction while walking to work at
St Bartholomew's Hospital waiting for
traffic lights to change on Southampton Row in
Bloomsbury, though his friend
Jacob Bronowski notes that he never knew Szilárd to wait for traffic lights. The following year he filed for a
patent on the concept.
Szilárd first attempted to create a chain reaction using
beryllium and
indium, but these
elements didn't produce a chain reaction. In 1936, he assigned the chain-reaction patent to the
British Admiralty to ensure its secrecy . Szilárd also was the co-holder, with
Nobel Laureate Enrico Fermi, of the patent on the
nuclear reactor .
In 1938 Szilárd accepted an offer to conduct research at
Columbia University in
Manhattan, and moved to
New York, and was soon joined by Fermi. After learning about nuclear fission in 1939, they concluded that
uranium would be the element capable of sustaining a chain reaction. Szilárd and Fermi conducted a simple experiment at Columbia and discovered significant neutron multiplication in Uranium, proving that the chain reaction was possible and opening the way to nuclear weapons. Szilárd later described the event: "We turned the switch, saw the flashes, watched for ten minutes, then switched everything off and went home. That night I knew the world was headed for sorrow".
At around that time the Germans and others were in a race to produce a nuclear chain reaction. German attempts to control the chain reaction sought to do so using graphite, but these attempts proved unsuccessful. Szilárd realized graphite was indeed perfect for controlling chain reactions, just as the Germans had determined, but that the method of producing graphite used
boron carbide rods, and the minute amount of
boron impurities in the manufactured graphite was enough to stop the chain reaction. Szilárd had graphite manufacturers produce boron-free graphite. As a result, the first human-controlled chain reaction occurred on
2 December 1942.
The Manhattan Project
Szilárd was directly responsible for the creation of the
Manhattan Project. He drafted a confidential letter to
Franklin D. Roosevelt explaining the possibility of nuclear weapons, warning of
Nazi work on such weapons and encouraging the development of a program which could lead to their creation. In August 1939 he approached his old friend and collaborator
Albert Einstein and convinced him to sign the letter, lending the weight of his fame to the proposal. The
Einstein-Szilárd letter led directly to the establishment of research into nuclear fission by the U.S. government and ultimately to the creation of the Manhattan Project; FDR handed the letter off to an aide, General Edwin M. "Pa" Watson with the instruction: "Pa, this requires action!" Later, Szilárd moved to the
University of Chicago to continue work on the project. There, along with Fermi, he helped to construct the first "neutronic reactor", a uranium and
graphite "
atomic pile" in which the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was achieved, in 1942.
As the war continued, Szilárd became increasingly dismayed that scientists were losing control over their research to the military, and clashed many times with General
Leslie Groves, military head of the project. His resentment towards the
U.S. government was exacerbated by his failed attempts to avoid the use of the atomic bomb in
war through having a test organised that could be witnessed by Japanese observers who would then have the opportunity to surrender and spare lives.
Szilárd became a
naturalized citizen of the
United States in 1943.
Views on the use of nuclear weapons
In 1932, Szilárd had read about the fictional "atomic bombs" described in
H. G. Wells's
science fiction novel
The World Set Free. This inspired him to be the first scientist to seriously examine the science behind the creation of
nuclear weapons.
As a scientist, he was the first person to conceive of a device that, using a
nuclear chain reaction as fuel, could be used as a bomb.
As a survivor of a devastated
Hungary after
World War I, and having witnessed the subsequent
terror of the Reds and the Whites, Szilárd developed an enduring passion for the preservation of human life and
freedom, especially freedom to communicate ideas.
He hoped that the U.S. government, which prior to World War II had staunchly opposed the bombing of civilians, wouldn't use nuclear weapons because of their potential for use against civilian populations. Szilárd hoped that the mere threat of such weapons would force
Germany and/or
Japan to surrender. He drafted the
Szilárd petition advocating demonstration of the atomic bomb. However with the European war concluded and the U.S. taking heavy casualties in the Pacific, the new U.S. President
Harry Truman sided with advisors and chose to use
atomic bombs against Hiroshima and Nagasaki over the protestations of Szilárd and other scientists.
After the war
In 1947, Szilárd switched fields of study because of his horror of atomic weapons, moving from physics to molecular biology, working extensively with
Aaron Novick. He proposed, in February of 1950, a new kind of nuclear weapon using
cobalt as a tamper, a
cobalt bomb, which he said might wipe out all life on the planet.
U.S. News & World Report featured an interview with Szilárd in its August 15, 1960 issue, "President Truman Didn't Understand." His penchant to use language provocatively and say things which most readers would dismiss as absurd is well evidenced in this quote from that interview: "But again, I don't believe this staging a demonstration was the real issue, and in a sense it's just as immoral to force a sudden ending of a war by threatening violence as by using violence. My point is that violence wouldn't have been necessary if we'd been willing to negotiate."
In 1961 Szilárd published a book of short stories,
The Voice of the Dolphins, in which he wrestled with the moral and ethical issues raised by the
Cold War and his own role in the development of
atomic weapons.
Szilárd married Gertrud Weiss in 1951. He spent his last years as a fellow at the
Salk Institute in
San Diego.
In 1960, Szilárd was diagnosed with
bladder cancer. He underwent
radiation therapy at
New York's Memorial Hospital using a treatment regimen that he designed himself. A second round of treatment followed in 1962; Szilárd's cancer remained in remission thereafter.
In 1962, Szilárd was part of a group of scientists who founded the
Council for a Livable World. The Council's goal was to warn the public and Congress of the threat of nuclear war and lead the way to rational arms control and nuclear disarmament.
In May of 1964, Szilárd died in his sleep of a
heart attack at the age of sixty-six. At his memorial it was said that Death was required to come to him while asleep, or otherwise he'd have outwitted it.
Personality
Szilárd was well known to his colleagues as an eccentric, lightning-quick thinker who "seemed fond of startling people" with strange, seemingly incongruous, yet extremely perceptive statements and questions. He was also extremely good at predicting political events. He is said to have predicted
World War I as a boy, and when the
Nazi party first appeared, he predicted that it would one day control
Europe. In 1934, he foresaw the details of
World War II. He then made a habit of residing in hotel rooms, with a packed suitcase always on hand. He often did a lot of his best thinking while taking a bath.
Honors
The impact crater Szilárd (34.0°N, 105.7°E, 122km dia.) on the lunar farside is named after him.
Bibliography
Leo Szilárd, "The Voice of the Dolphins and Other Stories" London: Victor Gollancz Ltd. 1961. Also Simon & Schuster, 1961 ISBN 0804717540
William Lanouette with Bela Silard, "Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilárd: The Man Behind The Bomb" (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1992) ISBN 0684190117Further Information
Get more info on 'Leo Szilard'.
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