Leo Szilard the eccentric physicist and one of 9 from Budapest who changed the world

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Szilard He and nine other Jews who changed the world forever had the commonality of a nurturing city .Budapest in the early 20's and Paris in the early 20th Century. This physicist conceived the nuclear chain reaction and worked on the Manhattan project, later to be detailed. He was an engineering student at Budapest Technical but left Hungary due to rising anti semitism under Horthy. At the Berlin Institute, he continued engineering changing to Physics, taking phyics classes from Einstein,Planck and Max von Laue.

His 1922 dissertation on Thermodynamic Fluctuations was highly praised by Einstein.

• 1923 Doctorate in physics Humboldt University of Berlin



• 1924 Assistant to von Laue at University of Berlin Institute for Theoretical Physics



• 1927 Became instructor U. of Berlin



• 1928 Technical invention -German patent -linear accelerator



• 1929 German patent application on the cyclotron



• He developed the idea of the nuclear chain reaction-an image from the FERMI SZILARD neutronic reactor patent



• 1933 He fled to London to escape Nazi tyranny- There he read an article by Ernest Rutherford in The Times which rejected atomic energy for practical purposes.Szilard was annoyed at the flippant dismissal and conceived the idea of the nuclear chain reaction while walking to work at St Bartholomew's Hospital waiting for the traffic lights to change.



• Szilard was an eccentric genius,assuredly, and had bursts of the intuitive and inspiring in the most unlikely of places. His brilliance and originality were not happenstance but by design to evolve the species perhaps?

Leó Szilárd (Hungarian: Szilárd
Leó, February 11, 1898 – May 30, 1964) was a Hungarian 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.
Contents[hide]
1 Early life
2
Developing the idea of the nuclear chain reaction
3 The
Manhattan Project
4
Views on the use of nuclear weapons
5 After the
war
6
Personality
7
Honors
8 See
also
9
Notes
10
References
11 External
links

[edit]
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 1,781,541 on November 11, 1930).

[edit]
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).