Leó Szilárd

Leó Szilárd
Leó Szilárd when he was 18 years old
Leó Szilárd when he was 18 years old
Born February 11, 1898(1898-02-11)
Budapest, Hungary (Austria-Hungary)
Died May 30, 1964 (aged 66)
La Jolla, California, U.S.
Residence Hungary
Germany
United States
Nationality Hungarian
German
American
Fields Physicist, Biologist
Institutions Technical University of Berlin
Humboldt University of Berlin
Columbia University
University of Chicago
Brandeis University
Alma mater Technische Universität Berlin
Humboldt Universität zu Berlin
Doctoral advisor Max von Laue
Known for Thermodynamics, nuclear chain reaction

Leó Szilárd (Hungarian: Szilárd Leó, February 11, 1898 – May 30, 1964) was a Hungarian-German-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.

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Early life

Szilárd was born into a Jewish family from 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

An image from the Fermi-Szilárd "neutronic reactor" patent

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 had not 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.[1] 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 did not produce a chain reaction. In 1936, he assigned the chain-reaction patent to the British Admiralty to ensure its secrecy (GB patent 630726). Szilárd also was the co-holder, with Nobel Laureate Enrico Fermi, of the patent on the nuclear reactor (U.S. Patent 2,708,656 ).

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".[2]

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.[3]

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.[4] 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!"[5] 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.[6]

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, would not 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 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 is just as immoral to force a sudden ending of a war by threatening violence as by using violence. My point is that violence would not have been necessary if we had 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. The title story described an international biology research laboratory in Central Europe. This became reality following a meeting in 1962 with Victor F. Weisskopf, James Watson and John Kendrew. When the European Molecular Biology Laboratory was established, the library was named The Szilard Library and the library stamp features dolphins.

Szilárd married Gertrud Weiss in 1951.[7] 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 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 would 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

Bibliography

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Knowledge or Certainty". Jacob Bronowski (writer, presenter). The Ascent of Man. 39:01 minutes in.
  2. ↑ Rhodes, "The Making Of The Atomic Bomb", Simon & Schuster, 1986
  3. ↑ Bethe, Hans A. (2000-03-27). "The German Uranium Project". Physics Today Online 53: 34. doi:10.1063/1.1292473. 
  4. ↑ The Atomic Heritage Foundation. "Einstein's Letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt". Retrieved on 2007-05-26.
  5. ↑ The Atomic Heritage Foundation. ""Pa, this requires action!"". Retrieved on 2007-05-26.
  6. ↑ "Knowledge or Certainty". Jacob Bronowski (writer, presenter). The Ascent of Man. 41:14 minutes in.
  7. ↑ Esterer, Arnulf K.; Luise A. Esterer (1972). Prophet of the Atomic Age: Leo Szilard. Julian Messner. pp. 148. ISBN 067132523X. 

External links

Information

Patents

Persondata
NAME Szilárd, Léo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Physicist and biologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 11, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Budapest, Hungary
DATE OF DEATH May 30, 1964
PLACE OF DEATH La Jolla, California, U.S.