I am grateful to Gene Dannen for providing copies of his correspondence with C. H. Collie and for helpful endnote corrections; to Alice K. Smith for providing copies of her interviews with Manhattan Project scientists; and to James Hume for providing copies of his files on Szilard’s patent applications and negotiations with the Manhattan Project; and to Thelonious Sphere Monk, whose music—so sprightly and so loose—created a perfect atmosphere for editing.
I am very grateful to my agent, F. Joseph Spieler; and to my editor, Robert Stewart, as well as Roberta Corcoran, Carol Cook, Theresa Czajkowska, and Mark LaFlaur at Scribners, for their helpful criticisms and steady encouragement.
I am especially grateful to Bela Silard for his patient and diligent work at recollecting and reconstructing so many telling details of his brother’s life and to his wife, Elizabeth, for her amusing perspectives on the Szilard family. Bela, in turn, is thankful to Ruth Henry and Eileen Reilly for their assistance.
I am delighted that Frederick Reuss and Robin Moody led me to Skyhorse Publishing, and at Skyhorse I am most grateful to Jay Cassell and Kelsie Besaw for helping me add so much to this new edition.
And I am deeply grateful to my wife, JoAnne, and my daughters, Nicole and Kathryn, for making Leo Szilard’s life—and my struggle with it—a part of their own.
Although aided and sustained by all these generous people, I alone am responsible for this book’s errors and omissions.
Notes
The richest source of documentary information about Leo Szilard is his collected personal papers (LSP), which were assembled in La Jolla, California, after his death by his widow, Gertrud (Trude) Weiss Szilard, and donated to the University of California at San Diego by her brother and heir, Egon Weiss. Where possible, my citations include the box and folder numbers as (box #/folder #).
The second-richest source is the memory of Bela Silard, Leo Szilard’s brother. In countless personal and telephone interviews, Bela described, corrected, and revised anecdotes and facts about his family and his life with Leo. All of Bela Silard’s written contributions are cited as the Bela Silard Papers (BSP).
In addition, Egon Weiss inherited several documents found in Trude’s apartment at the time of her death in 1981, including health and financial records for herself and Leo. For my purposes, the most important documents from this collection are the more than three hundred letters from Leo to Trude, which I had translated from the German for use in this volume. Incidental letters between Trude and Leo’s mother are also in this collection, which I designate as part of the Egon Weiss Papers (EWP).
All books and articles listed in the Selected Bibliography are cited only by author in the Notes, together with appropriate page numbers.
INTERVIEWS
The people I have interviewed for this book are listed below. Where an interview was the source of specific information, the date of the interview appears in the endnote.
Pnina G. Abir-Am, James L. Adams, Ruth Adams, Harold Agnew, Edoardo Amaldi, Herbert L. Anderson, James Arnold, Pierre Auger, David Baltimore, Sidney W. Barnes, Etienne Bauer, Anna Beck, Baruj Benacerraf, Charles H. Bennett, Barton J. Bernstein, Hans Bethe, Anna F. Bettelheim, Lazislas Bihaly, Elias Blatter, Walter Blum, Sydney Brenner, John E Bresette, Rita Bronowski, Harvey Brooks, Harrison Brown, McGeorge Bundy, Lydia Cassin, Melvin Cohn, Arthur Cooke, Norman Cousins, Edward C. Creutz, Francis Crick, Alice Eppinger Danos, Bernard D. Davis, Kingsley Davis, Jean-François Delassus, Manny Delbrück, Roland Detre, William Doering, Paul Doty, Renato Dulbecco, Freeman Dyson, John T. Edsall, Walter M. Elsasser, Ugo Fano, Bernard T. Feld, Inge Feltrinelli, Richard P. Feynman, Roger Fisher, Allan Forbes, Maurice Fox, Lawrence Freedman, Milton Friedman, David H. Frisch, Richard Garwin, Vitalii I. Goldanskii, Stanley Goldberg, Marvin Goldberger, Mildred Goldberger, Maurice Goldhaber, Bertrand Goldschmidt, Margaret Gowing, Gerda Gray, Howard Green, Clifford Grobstein, Ruth Grodzins, Carol Gruber, Jules Gueron, David H. Gurinsky, Morton Hamermesh, Charles Hartshorne, Gertrude S. Hausmann, David Hawkins, Frances Hawkins, Helen Hawkins, Mariana Heller, William A. Higinbotham, Dorothy C. Hodgkin, Rollin D. Hotchkiss, Patrick Hogan, James P. Hume, David R. Inglis, François Jacob, Gerald Johnson, Herman M. Kalckar, Martin M. Kaplan, Carl Kaysen, Esther Scheiber Kelerman, William Kincade, Albert Kornfeld (Albi Korodi), Nicholas Kurti, Ralph Landauer, Ralph E. Lapp, Peter Lax, Joshua Lederberg, Richard Leghorn, Leonard Lerman, Max Lerner, Edward Levi, Milton Levinson, Elsbeth Liebowitz, John C. Lilly, Patricia Lindop, Herman Lisco, Eva Litván, George Litván, Robert Livingston, Franklin Long, Antonio deLozado, Salvador Luria, Oloe Maalóe, Renata Maas, Werner K. Maas, Norman Macrae, Norene Mann, Philip I. Marcus, Hermann Mark, M. A. Markov, Paul Marks, John Marshall, Jr., Samuel Marx, George McGovern, James Warren McKie, Richard L. Meier, Horst Melcher, Matthew Meselson, Philip Morrison, Phylis Morrison, Aaron Novick, Harold Oram, Leslie E. Orgel, Harold Orlans, Humphry Osmond, Harry Palevsky, Gábor Pallo, Rudolf Peierls, Max Perutz, Gerard Piel, Maria Piers, Ruth Pinkson, John R. Platt, Attila Pók, Ralph Pomerance, Theodore T. Puck, Isidor I. Rabi, Efraim Racker, Frances Racker, Marcus G. Raskin, George Rathjens, Joseph L. Rauh, Jr., Roger Revelle, Alexander Rich, Jennifer L. Robbins, Walter Orr Roberts, Maurice Rosenblatt, Joseph Rotblat, David Rudolph, Jack Ruina, Abram L. Sachar, Robert Sachs, Jonas Salk, Rose Scheiber, Thomas C. Schelling, Lisbeth Bamberger Schorr, John Schrecker, Frederick Seitz, Martin J. Sherwin, William A. Shurcliff, Elizabeth Silard, Janet Silard, John Silard, Lady Charlotte Simon, Esther Simpson, John A. Simpson, Daniel M. Singer, Alice K. Smith, Cyril Smith, Margaret R. Spanel, Michael Straight, Roger Stuewer, Ferenc Szabadváry, Istvan Szemenyei, Julius Tabin, Theodore B. Taylor, Lia Telegdi, Valentine Telegdi, Alfred Tissieres, Kosta Tsipis, Frieda Urey, Frank von Hippel, Spencer R. Weart, Conant Webb, George L. Weil, Irwin Weil, Alvin M. Weinberg, Nella Fermi Weiner, Egon A. Weiss, Renée Weiss, Victor Weisskopf, John A. Wheeler, Rolf Wideröe, Jerome B. Wiesner, Eugene P. Wigner, Robert R. Wilson, Leona Steiner Wolf, Naomi Liebowitz Wood, Ramsay Wood, Christopher Wright, Herbert F. York, Stan Zahler, Eva Zeisel, Hans Zeisel, Walter Zinn.
ABBREVIATIONS
AAC
Academic Assistance Council Records, reorganized as the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning (SPSL). The society’s papers are in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Now the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics.
AEP
Albert Einstein Papers. About forty-three thousand documents in the Einstein Archive are now housed at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Duplicate archives are maintained at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey (AEP/P) and at the Albert Einstein Papers project at Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts (AEP/B). Most Einstein documents are identified by an index number, which I cite with the date whenever possible.
AIP
Niels Bohr Library, American Institute of Physics, College Park, Maryland.
AKS
Alice K. Smith. Her book about the postwar scientists’ movement to control nuclear weapons, A Peril and a Hope, appeared in editions by the University of Chicago Press (AKS/UC) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press (AKS/MIT). All other AKS citations are to papers in her possession in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
BAS
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Files, JRL.
BFP
Bernard T. Feld Papers, MIA.
BSP
Bela Silard Papers, in Lanouette/Szilard Papers, MSS 659, LSP.
CIT
California Institute of Technology Archives, Pasadena, California.
CRN
CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research) Archive, Geneva.
DTM
Archives of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution of Washington. Now the Carnegie Institution for Science.
EFP
Enrico Fermi Papers, JRL.
ERP
Eugene Rabinowitch Papers, JRL.
EWP
Egon Weiss Papers, Carlsbad, California.
/> FDR
Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York.
FLP
Frederick Alexander Lindemann (Cherwell) Papers, Nuffield College, Oxford.
FSP
Francis Simon Papers, Library of the Royal Society, London.
GSP
Gertrud Weiss Szilard Papers, identified as the “Gertrud Szilard Materials” in boxes 84 to 92 and 107 of the LSP.
GSS
Gertrud Weiss Szilard Scrapbook. Five numbered scrapbooks containing newspaper and magazine clips about Leo Szilard and political developments surrounding the use and control of nuclear weapons. These are in the Leo Szilard Papers (LSP).
JFK
John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts.
JGC
Jerome Grossman Collection, Boston Public Library.
JRL
Joseph Regenstein Library, University of Chicago.
JSP
Jonas Salk Papers, MSS 1, Mandeville Department of Special Collections, Central University Library, University of California, San Diego.
LCM
Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
LLS
Lewis L. Strauss Papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa.
LSP
Leo Szilard Papers, MSS 32, Mandeville Department of Special Collections, Central University Library, University of California, San Diego. Number citations are to the box and folder. (E.g., LSP 2/3 is to the Leo Szilard Papers, box 2, folder 3.) The Szilard Papers have been reorganized twice in the course of my research, each time with no references kept to the documents’ previous locations. Where I was able to trace the documents to their current (and, I hope, final) locations, I have cited box and folder numbers. For all other documents, I have simply cited the Leo Szilard Papers (LSP).
MED
Manhattan Engineer District Records, National Archives.
MIA
Institute Archives, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
MIT
The Collected Works of Leo Szilard is published in three volumes. For brief citation I have listed Bernard T. Feld and Gertrud Weiss Szilard, eds, The Collected Works of Leo Szilard: Scientific Papers (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1972) as MIT Vol. I; Spencer Weart and Gertrud Weiss Szilard, eds., Leo Szilard: His Version of the Facts (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978) as MIT Vol. II, and Helen Hawkins, G. Allen Greb, and Gertrud Weiss Szilard, eds., Toward a Livable World (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987) as MIT Vol. III.
MPP
Michael Polanyi Papers, JRL.
OSR
Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) Records, National Archives.
PCF
Files of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, London Office.
RAC
Rockefeller Archive Center, Pocantico Hills, North Tarrytown, New York.
RMH
Robert Maynard Hutchins Papers, JRL.
S-1 S-1(uranium bomb project), National Archives.
SIA
Salk Institute Archive, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California.
SMR
Leo Szilard Medical Records, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York (copies obtained by permission of Egon Weiss), in LSP.
VNP
John von Neumann Papers, LCM.
WBP
William Beveridge Papers. British Library of Political and Economic Science, London School of Economics and Political Science.
CHAPTER 1
1. Most episodes in this chapter were first drafted or dictated by Bela Silard, who also provided anecdotes and details in many interviews and letters.
Two other essential sources are the manuscripts “Recollections” by Louis Szilard, 1953, translated by Bela Silard (LSP 2/6); and “Memoirs” by Tekla Szilard, 1939, translated by Anna Bettelheim (BSP).
Spitz/Szilard family documents are in 1 and 106 LSP. Other details are from John Lukacs, Budapest 1900 (New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988). For a photograph of the Fasor near the Szilard home and for other views of the Garden District, see the last few pages of Budapest Anno (Budapest: Corvina, 1984).
2. Realizing that Leo loved his felt hat and all it stood for, his parents bought him a new one. According to Bela, the replacement was black, which displeased Leo, but had an even wider brim that seemed to make up for the color change.
3. MIT Vol. II, p. 3. Szilard dictated this episode in May 1960.
4. “Recollections” (LSP 2/6).
5. By a second link between the Spitz and Klopstock families, the youngest Klopstock brother, Adolf, married the second-youngest Spitz sister, Gizella.
6. “Memoirs,” p. 185 (BSP).
7. Ibid., p. 186.
8. “Recollections,” p. 143 (LSP 2/6).
9. Memoirs,” p. 188 (BSP).
10. McCagg, p. 186.
11. “Recollections,” pp. 145–46 (LSP 2/6).
12. Ibid., p. 146.
13. “Memoirs,” p. 190 (BSP).
14. “Leo Szilard—Biographical Notes,” p. 2. From a February 21, 1960, interview by Robert Livingston (LSP 2/9).
15. Notes by Bela Silard in “Recollections” (LSP 2/6).
16. “Recollections,” pp. 154–56 (LSP 2/6).
CHAPTER 2
1. Most episodes in this chapter were first drafted or dictated by Bela Silard, who also provided anecdotes and details in many interviews and letters.
Two other essential sources are the manuscripts “Recollections” by Louis Szilard, 1953, translated by Bela Silard (LSP 2/6); and “Memoirs” by Tekla Szilard, 1939, translated by Anna Bettelheim (BSP).
2. For more details on the Vidor Villa see “Vidor Zsigmond dr. ur fasori villája” Magyar Pályázatok IV, 1906 (No. 2, pp. 25–31); and Dr. Peter Buza, “Lustjo—Vidor,” Budapest a fovaros folyoirata, Vol. 20 (March 1982, pp 18–20).
3. Louis Kossuth became finance minister of Hungary’s independent, anti- Austrian government after the March 1948 revolution, and when the Austrians counterattacked, he led a government of national defense from Debrecen. In 1849, Hungary’s Parliament declared the country an independent republic, with Kossuth as its first president.
4 “Leo Szilard—Biographical Notes” by Robert Livingston, February 21, 1960 (LSP 2/9).
5. Louis Szilard was a founder of the Petrofi Lodge. See Joseph Palatinus, A szabadkomuvesseg bunei (Budapest, 1939). My thanks to George Litván for this information. George Litvan to the author, August, 18, 1987.
6. MIT Vol. II, p. 3.
7. New York Post, November 24, 1945.
8. R. B. Turnai to Szilard, October 4, 1953 (LSP 18/31).
9. Rose Scheiber interview, July 16, 1987.
10. “Memoirs,” p. 193.
11. Ibid., pp. 193–94.
CHAPTER 3
1. Most episodes in this chapter were first drafted or dictated by Bela Silard, who also provided anecdotes and details in many interviews and letters.
Two other essential sources are the manuscripts “Recollections” by Louis Szilard, 1953, translated by Bela Silard (LSP 2/6); and “Memoirs” by Tekla Szilard, 1939, translated by Anna Bettelheim (BSP).
Szilard’s electricity text was by Gyözö Zemplén, once a professor at Budapest’s Technical University.
2. A Leclanché battery had one carbon and one zinc electrode suspended in a jar of acid.
3. MIT Vol. II, p. 4; Ertesitoje, Budapest Hatodik Keruleti Allami Forealiskola 19- ik evi (BSP).
4. MIT Vol. II, p. 4.
5. The only adolescent friendship that survived after Szilard left Hungary was with Albert Kornfeld (Albi Korodi). The two first met in Budapest when they received science prizes in 1916, and later studied together in Berlin.
6. Alice Eppinger Danos interview, July 16, 1987.
7. The Eppinger family lived at 28 Fasor.
8. Alice Danos interview, June 10, 1986.
9. Emil Freund owned the Köbánya Br
ewery, in the Budapest suburb of that name southeast of the Garden District.
10. “Recollections,” p. 175 (LSP 2/6).
11. MIT Vol. II, p. 5.
12. Ibid., pp. 5–6. See also Szilard’s October 30, 1961, draft dictation, p. 10, for “Are We on the Road to War?” (LSP).
13. Documents relating to Szilard’s military service (LSP 1/9 and 1/10).
14. Report Card and other academic records (LSP 1/9).
15. MIT Vol. II, p. 5. The “fission,” or splitting, of the uranium atom became known to the scientific community in January 1939 and, in large part because of Szilard’s inventiveness, led to the successful creation of a nuclear chain reaction by December 1942.
16. Copy dated January 3, 1920 (LSP 1/12).
17. MIT Vol. II, p. 5.
18. Information on Szilard’s engineering studies comes from his transcripts (LSP 1/2 and 1/11). See also Szabadváry, pp. 187–90.
19. Before the war, high school graduates could start officers’ training directly after graduation and serve for one year. In wartime only the title survived; Szilard’s tour of duty was unlimited.
20. Leo Szilard Biographical Table (LSP 2/9).
21. MIT Vol. II, p. 6.
22. Alice Danos interview, June 10, 1986.
23. The camp was located at the entrance to the Ziller Valley, between the towns of Wörgl and Jenbach, a few miles east of Innsbruck.
24. MIT Vol. II, p. 6.
25. Undated postcard, translated by Roland Detre, Rose Szilard’s husband.
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