Genius in the Shadows
Page 19
Jones questioned Szilard’s “official connection” to the refugee groups, found that he had none, and learned that English academics were also “suspicious” of his activities.43 Working independently gave Szilard the freedom he enjoyed but also forced him to pay for all his hectic travel that spring and summer, prompting the fear he “cannot possibly go on with this for very long.” Yet his accomplishments made the sacrifice worthwhile. “I can be so useful that I cannot afford to retire into private life,” he boasted.44
Indeed, Szilard’s work to create and run the AAC was useful beyond his dreams: It placed more than 2,500 refugee scholars by the outbreak of war in 1939. The AAC exists today as the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics and still aids displaced scholars. “This activity suited my temperament,” Szilard later reflected, “for I always found it easier to solve the problems of others than to solve my own problems.”45
Behind Szilard’s compulsion to “be so useful” during the summer of 1933 was his belief that a war with Germany was inevitable. He mentioned “the next war” in conversations and letters, wondering when England and the United States might become involved. “I think most of my friends feel the burden of the situation and react by plunging deeper into their work and sealing hermetically their ears,” he complained in one letter. “I feel rather reluctant to follow their example, but I may have no choice left.”46
In fact, Szilard’s choices for an academic career were very few, in part because his “sense of proportion” kept him from asking for help from the refugee committees he assisted. Szilard’s reluctance also masked deeper confusion about what to do with his life, confusion that had troubled him for years. With his savings from Switzerland now in a Russell Square bank, Szilard had no need to find an academic post by the fall term. He could survive, he reckoned, “in the style in which I was accustomed to live” for about a year.47
Yet at age thirty-five he did worry about his future and tried to secure a position, at least indirectly. First, Szilard considered teaching at Dacca University in India, where he knew physicist Satyendranath N. Bose, a friend he had met through Einstein in Berlin.48 Then Professor Donnan offered Szilard a lectureship at the University of London. Szilard’s reluctance to ask for help confused the many colleagues who were eager to aid him, including his friend Eugene Wigner. When Szilard wrote Wigner to say that “somebody should also worry about myself, since I obviously cannot do that, because at any rate it would be incompatible with my present activity” for the AAC,49 Wigner turned for help to their mutual friend Michael Polanyi, now in Manchester.
. . . I thought of you, since your hands hold so many strings, that perhaps you could know of something that would be good for him and which takes into consideration his personal characteristics, too.
. . . He has my undivided respect because of his straightforwardness and his truthfulness. His selflessness is almost without parallel among my acquaintances. He has an imagination that would be of unusual value for any institute for which he would work. I would not know whether a purely scientific occupation would be the best for him, although even that should be considered. At any rate, it would be a great shame even from this point of view if his abilities would remain unused. . . .
I feel that it would be better if he would continue to busy himself [with] politics only incidentally and as a side line.
The above should by no means be understood as a doubting that he would do well in his political efforts.
As a main occupation, I was thinking about two possibilities: either [for him] to be active as a consultant to a large company; that would gain for the company considerable value, even though rather irregularly at various time periods. The second possibility I thought of would be for him to be working for a publisher. . . . I do not think that Szilard would do sloppy work; to the contrary, I believe that he could that way have an occupation in which his capabilities would develop excellently.
Of course, we have to ask him, too.
Yours, E. Wigner.50
When Donnan asked Einstein and others for recommendations, physicist Max von Laue, Szilard’s doctoral thesis adviser, and Erwin Schrödinger replied with an enthusiastic joint letter.51 Another testimonial, by Prof. Max Volmer of Berlin’s Technical Institute, told Donnan that Szilard
. . . is worthy of special consideration, since he is one of the most capable and many-sided people I have ever met. He unites in a rare fashion a complete understanding of the development of modern physics with a capacity for dealing with problems of all fields of classical physics and physical chemistry.
Dr. Szilard is unique in his independent, original, and inventive attitude toward all problems.52
Even as this praise for Szilard came to those in London who could help him, he remained ambivalent about a science career. “I am not against going to America,” he wrote in August, “but I would very much prefer to live in England. I have not dismissed the idea of going to India; neither has this idea grown stronger.”53 Then something appears to have changed with Donnan’s offer: a second opening, perhaps, or a time limit on the first one. To Wigner, Szilard wrote:
I am sorry that our correspondence is so full of misunderstandings. I know that I am guilty because my letters are so short, but I cannot help it, as I am working against time. . . .
To begin with, you need not worry about my last letter. There was not a shade of reproach in it. . . .
Secondly, I did not make any serious attempt until now to get a scientific position here. All I did was to ask several people for testimonials to be at hand should occasion arise later. Donnan asked me about my plans and said that he would like to do something for me, so I suggested that he should first get testimonials. That’s all. I should very much like to see you, and I shall stay in London all the time so that if it is convenient to you, we can easily meet, if you still sail from Southampton. Why are you sailing on the Bremen?54
Szilard reported that he was working at the AAC offices while others were on holiday, and “I never finish before 10:00 p.m.” The same day, Szilard betrayed more anxiety about his future when he wrote to Einstein, enclosing a copy of Donnan’s request for a recommendation. “Since he did not get an answer from you,” Szilard wrote, “he asked me what to do; it seems that momentarily there is a chance that may not last for very long.” Szilard also reported that he was “very much involved” with both the AAC and the Hartog Committee (the Jewish Board), “so that I could not have them give me a stipend.” He closed by noting that “the secretaries of the [AAC] are on vacation, and I am substituting for them. It is pretty exhausting and full of responsibility but also fun.”55
Einstein’s prompt endorsement to Donnan was both warm and generous, describing Szilard as “a versatile and able physicist” who “has ideas on the experimental but also technical level and keeps his focus on the theoretically substantive matters.” Szilard “belongs to the group of people who, through their richness of ideas, create an intellectual environment for others. I have come to value highly his abilities through my collaboration with him on technical levels.” Einstein noted that during the economic and political pressures of the last few years Szilard “has also gained credit in human terms, as he has helped to take care of younger colleagues. It seems only just if he himself is not left out.”56
The Austrian physicist Paul Ehrenfest heard from friends that “people in England are now trying to do something for Szilard” and sent his own enthusiastic reference. Ehrenfest was one of the first physicists to explain quantum theories in relation to older studies and at the time held the theoretical physics chair at Leiden University in Holland. “Szilard is a very rare example of a man,” Ehrenfest wrote, “because of his combination of great purely scientific acumen, his ability to immerse himself in and solve technical problems, his fascination and fantasy for organizing, and his great sensitivity and compassion for people in need. . . .” Ehrenfest also praised Szilard’s “extremely original, versatile, and innovative intellect” and noted that
For even though this procedure is not always successful, an energetic reaction is still vastly more fruitful than a passive attitude. I feel deeply ashamed when I see how wonderfully energetically he immediately set about doing everything in his power to work for the Jewish-German scholars. And I know only too well how much he would long for an opportunity to sit back and quietly contemplate those questions that interest him most.
Ehrenfest “would be most particularly happy,” he concluded, “to hear someday that Szilard is working specifically with your laboratory and in addition discusses problems of the frontiers of science with you. A discussion on physics with Szilard is always a highly interesting occupation, particularly if it starts off with a heated argument’57
And Schrödinger wrote Donnan a second letter, ranking Szilard “among my true personal friends” and adding that “what he had to say was always of a profound and original kind” and “would not occur to anybody else.” Schrödinger noted the same for Szilard’s publications, which are few because of
a rather wide range of interests (which are by no means limited to the science of physics) and the absolute refusal of publishing on a subject that he has not really thoroughly studied in all its details and connections to others, even far-removed subject matters. My personal hope with regard to Dr. Szilard is that he will find occasion to specialize his work and his interests a little more.
Schrödinger considered Szilard “an absolutely trustful and truly altruistic person who has all the qualities that would make him a valuable and esteemed member of an institution colaborating [sic] toward some common aim.”58
With this stream of high praise from the giants of modern science, a position at University College seemed assured for Szilard—if he wanted it. Donnan liked Szilard. And Szilard liked London. “In spite of being rather tired, I feel very happy in England,” Szilard wrote that August.
This is partly due to the phenomenon that I always feel very happy for the first few months in a foreign country, but probably also due to the deeper sympathy I feel with the country and the people. I am not yet sure about the sympathy being mutual, but this is only a matter of practical importance.59
Szilard liked the English because of their reserve. A very private and often shy person himself, he enjoyed their childish formalities and academic humor. If Budapest had been his natural home, Berlin his intellectual home, and Vienna his cultural home, then London was quickly becoming Szilard’s spiritual home. Quite simply, the place and the people made him feel at ease.
During that busy summer in London, Szilard also took special pleasure in the comforts of the Imperial Hotel. For all his running about, he often began the day very slowly: eating breakfast in the ornate restaurant, then returning to soak in the bathtub. This Archimedean routine, he would later say, offered the solitary and relaxing atmosphere he needed to just think—the task that Szilard had considered his most important ever since adolescence. Some mornings he soaked for two or three hours.60 And each morning, Szilard also took the time to read London’s many papers, his inexpensive way both to improve his English and to follow world affairs.
In his work for the AAC, Szilard called on Prof. Archibald V. Hill at the University of London, and during their talk he learned that Hill had begun as a physicist, then changed to physiology, winning the Nobel Prize in 1922. Hill encouraged Szilard’s dawning interest in biology and offered him a part-time job as a demonstrator. “Twenty-four hours before you demonstrate you read up these things, and then you should have no difficulty in demonstrating them the next day,” Hill proposed. “In this way, by teaching physiology, you would learn physiology, and it’s a good place to begin.”61
Biology then appealed to Szilard because enough was finally known about its physical laws to allow analytic scientists to become theoretical, to postulate general principles from their detailed observations. Besides, Szilard later rationalized,
if you live in an orderly society in peacetime, the social pressures are such that it is very difficult for a man to change his field, even within physics, and even more difficult to change his field from physics to biology. But these were not ordinary times.62
He would have probably joined London University in some capacity when the academic year began that September. But within two weeks of collecting his many avid recommendations for Donnan, another idea so gripped Szilard’s imagination that he deferred studying biology for more than a decade. That idea was the nuclear chain reaction.
Photo Insert 1
Leo Szilard at about age five, in a soldier suit (Bela Silard Collection)
Bela, Leo, and Rose Szilard in the Austrian resort town of Ischl, summer 1905 (Roland Detre Collection)
Louis Szilard, Leo’s father, at about age fifty. He changed the family name from Spitz to Szilard in 1900, when Leo was two years old. (Bela Silard Collection)
Leo Szilard’s mother, Tekla Vidor Spitz, shown with one-year-old Leo (Bela Silard Collection)
Rear view of the Vidor Villa, where Leo Szilard grew up, just before its completion in 1902 (Magyar Pályázatok IV; courtesy of Fővárosi Szabó Ervin Könyvtár, Budapest)
A Vidor family holiday in Aussee, Austria, summer 1915. Leo Szilard is fifth from the left in the back row. In the next row. his sister, Rose, is fourth and his brother, Bela, is sixth from the left. In the second row, Leo’s father, Louis, is at the left and Leo’s mother, Tekla, is fourth from the left. (Bela Silard Collection)
Leo Szilard in 1916, sporting a hat like the one he lost in a fight with an elephant (Egon Weiss Collection)
“Cooling the Passions” a humorous pose arranged in 1915 by Rose Szilard and photographed by Bela to tease their brother, Leo, about his infatuation with Mizzi Freund. From the left are Leo, Mizzi, and her husband, Emil Freund. In back of them, on the ladder, is Rose Szilard at the left, with the Szilards’ cousin Otto Scheiber in the center (under the ladder) and Rezsin (Regine) Vidor, Emil’s sister, on the right. (Photograph by Bela Silard/ Roland Detre Collection)
At a field artillery barracks in Budapest during World War I, 1917–1918, Leo Szilard leans on the wheel on the far right. (Bela Silard Collection)
Leo Szilard’s 1919 passport photo (Leo Szilard Papers Mandeville Department of Special Collections, University of California, San Diego, Library)
Alice Eppinger, Leo Szilard’s high school sweetheart, in Venice, about 1926 (Bela Silard Collection)
Leo Szilard asleep among friends at Lecco, Lake Como, Italy, in 1926. From left: Alice Eppinger; Elizabeth Fejer (later Mrs. Bela Silard); Mrs. Adele Eppinger, Alice’s mother; Leona (Lola) Steiner; and Clara Erdelyi. (Bela Silard Collection)
Leo Szilard’s photo for a student ID card, Berlin, 1920s (Bela Silard Collection)
Leo Szilard photographed in the spring of 1936 by Trude Weiss on a weekend trip in the English countryside (Egon Weiss Collection)
Leo Szilard and Ernest O. Lawrence at the 1935 American Physical Society meeting in Washington, DC. Szilard seems to urge secrecy, perhaps for his then-secret patent on nuclear chain reactions. Lawrence developed cyclotrons and would later join Szilard and other scientists in the Manhattan Project. (Leo Szilard Papers, Mandeville Department of Special Collections, University of California, San Diego, Library)
Gertrud (Trude) Weiss in 1928, just before she met Leo Szilard in Berlin (Egon Weiss Collection)
In the 1946 March of Time film “Atomic Power,” Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard re-create the day in August 1939 when they drafted the letter that would alert President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the dangers of the German A-bomb program and lead to the creation of the Manhattan Project. (CriticalPast)
The creators of the world’s first nuclear chain reaction pose in December 1946 on the steps of Eckhart Hall, their wartime office at the University of Chicago. Back row (left to right): Norman Hilberry, Samuel Al
lison, Thomas Brill, Robert G. Nobles, Warren Nyer, and Marvin Wilkening. Middle row: Harold Agnew, William Sturm, Harold Lichtenberger, Leona Woods Marshall, and Leo Szilard. Front row: Enrico Fermi, Walter Zinn, Albert Wattenberg, and Herbert Anderson. (University of Chicago)
Eugene Wigner and Leo Szilard in Manhattan, in the late 1930s (Courtesy of Fizikai Szemle)
Leo Szilard testifying before the House Military Affairs Committee in October 1945. Arguing for postwar civilian control of atomic energy, here he sketches a federal scheme for research and development. (AP/Wide World Photos)
Szilard (fourth from the left in the front row) at the Carnegie Institution’s annual theoretical physics conference in Washington, DC, spring 1946