Lee De Forest
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About the Leo Szilard
Leo Szilardwas a Hungarian-born physicist, biologist and inventor who made numerous important discoveries in nuclear physics and the biological sciences. He conceived the nuclear chain reaction in 1933, and patented the idea in 1936. In late 1939 he wrote the letter for Albert Einstein’s signature that resulted in the Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb, and then in 1944 wrote the Szilard petition asking President Truman to demonstrate the bomb without dropping it on civilians. According to Gyorgy Marx, he was one of the Hungarian scientists known as The Martians.
Szilard initially attended Palatine Joseph Technical University in Budapest, but his engineering studies were interrupted by service in the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I. He left Hungary for Germany in 1919, enrolling at Technische Hochschulein Berlin-Charlottenburgin Germany. Between 1926 and 1930, he worked with Einstein on the development of the Einstein refrigerator.
After Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933, Szilard urged his family and friends to flee Europe while they still could. He moved to England, where he helped found the Academic Assistance Council, an organization dedicated to helping refugee scholars find new jobs. While in England he discovered a means of isotope separation known as the Szilard-Chalmers effect.
Foreseeing another war in Europe, Szilard moved to the United States in 1938, where he worked with Enrico Fermi and Walter Zinn on means of creating a nuclear chain reaction. He was present when this was achieved within the Chicago Pile-1 on December 2, 1942. He worked for the Manhattan Project’s Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago on aspects of nuclear reactor design. He drafted the Szilard petition advocating a non-lethal demonstration of the atomic bomb, but the Interim Committee chose to use them in a military strike instead.
Together with Enrico Fermi, he applied for a nuclear reactor patent in 1944. He publicly sounded the alarm against the possible development of salted thermonuclear bombs, a new kind of nuclear weapon that might annihilate mankind.
His inventions, discoveries, and contributions related to biological science are also equally important, they include the discovery of feedback inhibition and the invention of the chemostat. According to Theodore Puck and Philip I. Marcus, Szilard gave essential advice which made the earliest cloning of the human cell a reality.
Diagnosed with bladder cancer in 1960, he underwent a cobalt-60 treatment that he had designed. He helped found the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, where he became a resident fellow. Szilard founded Council for a Livable World in 1962 to deliver “the sweet voice of reason” about nuclear weapons to Congress, the White House, and the American public. He died in his sleep of a heart attack in 1964.
Frequently Asked Questions
{mb_by_number_of_quotes} Quotes by Leo Szilard
- 1.
A scientist’s aim in a discussion with his colleagues is not to persuade, but to clarify.
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- 2.
Do your work for six years; but in the seventh, go into solitude or among strangers, so that the memory of your friends does not hinder you from being what you have become.
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- 3.
Pronouncement of experts to the effect that something cannot be done has always irritated me.
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- 4.
If you want to succeed in the world, you don’t have to be much cleverer than other people. You just have to be one day earlier.
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- 5.
If one knows only what one is told, one does not know enough to be able to arrive at a well-balanced decision.
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- 6.
Don’t lie if you don’t have to.
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- 7.
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.
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- 8.
I’m all in favor of the democratic principle that one idiot is as good as one genius, but I draw the line when someone takes the next step and concludes that two idiots are better than one genius.
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