Genius in the Shadows
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42. MIT Vol. I, pp. 147–48.
43. Szilard to Niels Bohr, March 26, 1936 (LSP 4/34). MIT Vol. II, pp. 44–45.
CHAPTER 8
1. See draft in Szilard to Einstein, June 30, 1931 (AEP 35 598). Szilard received the visa on July 6, 1931. Szilard’s erratic movements can be traced in his tattered passports and alien registration documents (LSP 1/6).
2. L. P. Eisenhart (chairman of the department of mathematics and dean of faculty at Princeton University) to Szilard, September 24, 1931 (LSP 15/24).
3. Einstein to the American consul general, October 24, 1931. Bela Silard translation (LSP 7/27).
4. Universität Berlin, Vorlesungsverzeichnis, 1931–32.
5. Szilard was assigned to Room 30, Berth C, Tourist Class (LSP 82/1).
6. Brandeis University Bulletin, February 1954, pp. 6–7. As Szilard added during the interview: “Today [1953–54], of course, it is not too difficult to think of things that will make it disappear. . . .” Things he had helped create, such as the A-bomb.
7. Chase Safe Deposit Co. receipt dated January 20, 1932 (LSP 1/23).
8. Eugene Wigner interview, October 29, 1987. Serge A. Korff, “The Physics Department of University College during the Three Decades from 1940 to 1970,” p. 8, and his September 24, 1970, manuscript (New York University Archives). Szilard CV stamped October 9, 1933, by Academic Assistance Council (AAC SPSL Sect. 4, Drawer 9). Statement attached to immigration form N-400 (LSP 1/25, 2/9). The Kenmore Hall was at 145 East Twenty-third Street.
9. Szilard to Lady Murray, April 24, 1934 (LSP 12/14–15). MIT Vol. II, pp. 36–37. In a similar protest, which Szilard proposed two years later, the boycott was to take effect if eight-tenths of the Nobel laureates who were approached agreed to sign.
10. Universität Berlin, Vorlesungsverzeichnis, 1932, p. 58. The only record of Szilard’s Washington visit is his receipt for a three-dollar money order, purchased at a post office on Pennsylvania Avenue, perhaps to pay the fee for his US citizenship application or for a patent. Receipt for April 29, 1932 (LSP).
11. MIT Vol. II, p. 13. Universität Berlin, Vorlesungsverzeichnis, 1932–33, p. 5.
12. MIT Vol. II, pp. 16–17.
13. Nature 131, 421, 457 (1933). Stent and Calendar, pp. 24–25. See also Victor Weisskopf’s review of Redirecting Science by Finn Aaserud in Science, Vol. 251 (February 8, 1991), pp. 684–85.
14. Delbrück Oral History 1978, p. 42 (CIT). Manny Delbrück interview, February 9, 1987.
15. Szilard’s papers reveal no evidence of a visit to Copenhagen, although he did visit Stockholm in 1928 (according to Hermann Mark and stamps in his passport) and again in the 1950s.
16. See Szilard’s Brandeis University speech of December 8, 1954, p. 2 (LSP 42/25).
17. MIT Vol. II, p. 16.
18. Szilard to Wigner, October 8, 1932, Bela Silard translation, with revisions by Maria Luise Wagner (LSP 21/4).
19. Polanyi to Einstein, October 13, 1932, Bela Silard translation (AEP 21 441-1). The Institute for Advanced Study was then headed by its first director, Abraham Flexner.
See also Einstein to Polanyi, October 19, 1932 (AEP 21 442). My thanks to William Scott for calling our attention to this letter. Scott to Bela Silard, May 7, 1986 (BSP).
20. Wigner to Polanyi, October 18, 1932, Bela Silard translation (MPP).
CHAPTER 9
1. MIT Vol. II, p. 13.
2. “Reminiscences,” p. 96. Polanyi to Lapworth, January 13, 1933, Bela Silard translation (MPP 2/11).
3. “Memoirs,” dictated 1960 (LSP 40/10). MIT Vol. II, p. 13.
4. Rose Scheiber interviews, September 4, 1986, and July 16, 1987.
5. Alice Danos interviews, June 10 and September 4, 1986.
6. The February 3, 1933, letter arrived at 58 Motzstrasse, home of Gerda Philipsborn and her mother.
7. After World War II, Harnack House became the officers’ club for the US occupation forces in Berlin.
8. Joachim Fest, Hitler (New York: Random House, 1975), pp. 396–98.
9. MIT Vol. II, pp. 13–14. “Reminiscences,” p. 96.
10. Meyer, p. 21; Shirer, pp. 193–94.
11. The New York Times, March 28, 1933, pp. 1 and 10, and March 29, p. 10.
12. This incident appears to be a temporary measure taken at the beginning of the anti-Jewish boycott. Other non-Aryan travelers left and entered Germany for several years.
13. MIT Vol. II, p. 14.
14. Hermann Mark to Bela Silard, June and July 1984; interview, October 28, 1985. Mark memo, “Data on Meetings with Leo Szilard,” p. 3. (undated but received at a November 25, 1985, interview).
15. “Leo Szilard: The Man Behind the Bomb, A Postscript with Gertrud Weiss Szilard,” interview by Helen Hawkins. KPBS-TV, San Diego (LSP 108). Esther Simpson to the author, January 14, 1993.
16. Szilard to Einstein, April 1933, Bela Silard translation (AEP/P 21 443).
17. According to Marschak, both Schlesinger and Kuhnwald committed suicide five years later, when Hitler arrived in Vienna. Marschak to Edward Shils, October 4, 1964 (LSP 92/4).
18. “Leo Szilard: A Memoir” by Edward Shils. Encounter, December 1964, pp. 35–41.
19. Jacob Marschak to Edward Shils, October 4, 1964 (LSP 92/4).
20. “Reminiscences,” pp. 97–98. Szilard wasted little time, setting off by train for London a few days later and arriving there on April 21. While en route to London, the summer semester began at Berlin University, and its catalog listed Szilard as teaching two courses: a “Discussion of New Work in Atomic Physics” with Lise Meitner and a “Discussion of New Work in Theoretical Physics” with Erwin Schrödinger. Universität Berlin, Vorlesungsverzeichnis 1933, p. 60.
21. Undated Hungarian letter “No. 3,” Bela Silard translation (LSP 1/23).
22. Lost London (New York: Weathervane Books, 1971), p. 199. Architectural critic Hermione Hobhouse called the structure’s style “riotously Plateresque.” The Imperial was known for three features: ornate Turkish baths for “ladies and gentlemen” decorated with glazed Doulton tile; a Winter Garden where a string orchestra played; and, overlooking the square, a huge clock with noisy chimes. Just above the clock’s face was the bust of a stern-looking man, and with each chime of the hour his red metal tongue stuck out—a scornful gesture by the architect toward the neighbors in the Georgian row houses who had protested the flamboyant hotel’s construction.
23. Szilard to Beveridge, April 22, 1933 (AAC SPSL Sect. 3, Drawer 8).
24. Szilard to Einstein, April 23, 1933 (AEP/P 115 and LSP 7/27).
25. Einstein to Szilard, April 26, 1933. Clark, 1972, p. 575 (LSP 7/27).
26. Szilard to Beveridge. MIT Vol. II, p. 31.
27. Szilard to Einstein, April 26, 1933 (AEP 21 446). As a scientist, Weizmann was well connected with academics in many countries; as a British subject, he helped influence the government’s administration of Palestine. In 1948 he would become the first president of the Republic of Israel.
28. Szilard to Beveridge, May 4, 1933 (LSP 4/30).
29. MIT Vol. II, p. 14.
30. Szilard to Beveridge, April 27, 1933 (AAC SPSL Sect. 3, Drawer 8).
31. “Preliminary Note on Academic Assistance Council with Appendices A.B.C.D.” (WBP Bev IXa 46).
32. Esther Simpson interview, October 3, 1985 and (AAC SPSL Sect. 3, Drawer 8).
33. Szilard to Dr. D[onnan], May 7, 1933. MIT Vol. II, pp. 32–34.
34. Hans Bethe interview, November 21, 1985.
35. MIT Vol. II, pp. 32–33.
36. Clark, 1972, p. 575.
37. Szilard to Liebowitz, n.d. (LSP 12/4).
38. Szilard to Beveridge, May 23, 1933 (AAC SPSL Sect. 3, Drawer 8).
39. Esther Simpson interview, May 25, 1986. Szilard to Beveridge, May 23, 1933 (AAC SPSL Sect. 3, Drawer 8).
40. Academic Assistance Council files; Szilard to an unknown addressee, August 11, 1933 (LSP 66/10). MIT Vol. II, p. 35.
41. The Notgemeinschaft Deutscher Wissenschaftlicher im
Auslande was headed by physicist Max Born.
42. Szilard to Gibson, July 19, 1933. July 22, 1933, letter to Szilard (AAC SPSL Sect. 3, Drawer 8).
43. L. W. Jones memoranda to Warren Weaver, June 28 and July 11 and 27, 1933. RAC, 200D, NYU, Szilard (RAC).
44. August 11, 1933, letter to unknown addressee (LSP 66/10). MIT Vol. II, p. 36.
45. “Memoirs,” dictated 1960, p. 6 (LSP 40/10).
46. August 11, 1933, letter to unknown addressee (LSP 66/10). MIT Vol. II, p. 35.
47. Midland Bank to Szilard, June 9, 1933 (LSP 75/8). MIT Vol. II, p. 17.
48. MIT Vol. II, pp. 34–36.
49. Wigner to Polanyi, June 25, 1933, Bela Silard translation (MPP 2/12).
50. Ibid. Then visiting Budapest, Wigner heard from Bela that Leo wanted to return to scientific work. This news, Wigner wrote Polanyi, “would please me very much if Szilard’s wish is serious. However, I am afraid that at one time about two or three months ago [he] did not yet know what he wanted to do.” Wigner to Polanyi, June 30, 1933, Bela Silard translation (MPP 2/12).
51. Donnan to Einstein, August 14, 1933 (AEP/P 453-1). Von Laue and Schrödinger to Donnan, July 21, 1933 (AAC SPSL Sect. 3, Drawer 8).
52. Max Volmer to Donnan, August 2, 1933 (AAC SPSL Sect. 4, Drawer 9, L. Szilard), (LSP 20/2).
Fritz G. Houtermans, a Dutch-born physicist Szilard knew from Berlin, reported to the Oxford physicist Frederick A. Lindemann that von Laue, Schrödinger, and Einstein all wished to help Szilard find a position. At the time, Lindemann advised the Imperial Chemical Industries trust for research grants. Houtermans was staying at the Royal Hotel, just off Russell Square, and may have met with Szilard during his visit. Lindemann could do nothing then, but promised, “If any possibilities arise I will get in touch with Dr. Szilard.” Lindemann to Houtermans, July 24, 1933 (AAC SPSL Sect. 4, Drawer 9), (FLP D. 91).
Meanwhile, Donnan wrote to Einstein, explaining Szilard’s situation and closing: “I need scarcely say that anything written by you would carry the greatest weight.” Donnan to Einstein, July 25, 1933 (AEP 21-453-1).
53. Szilard to unknown addressee, August 11, 1933 (LSP 66/10). MIT Vol. II, pp. 34–36.
54. Szilard to Wigner, August 17, 1933 (MPP 2/12).
55. Szilard to Einstein, August 14, 1933, Josef Ernst translation (AEP/B 21 452).
56. Einstein to Donnan, August 16, 1933, Josef Ernst translation (AEP/P 21 454 and AAC SPSL Sect. 4, Drawer 9).
57. Ehrenfest to Donnan, August 22, 1933 (LSP 32/7).
58. Schrödinger to Donnan, August 26, 1933 (AAC SPSL Sect. 3, Drawer 8 and Sect. 4, Drawer 9).
59. Szilard to unknown addressee, August 11, 1933 (LSP 66/10). MIT Vol. II, p. 35.
60. MIT Vol. II, p. 19.
61. Ibid., p. 16.
62. “Memoirs,” dictated 1960, p. 6 (LSP 40/10).
CHAPTER 10
1. The third kind, “gamma” radiation, carries no electrical charge and is the most penetrating of the three; while alpha particles can be stopped by a sheet of paper and beta by a thin sheet of metal, gamma particles can only be blocked by a dense material such as lead.
2. Clark, The Scientific Breakthrough, p. 152.
3. “Memoirs,” dictated 1960, p. 7 (LSP 40/10). Chadwick’s letter to Nature appeared February 27, 1932, while Szilard was in New York. Szilard returned to Germany in May and probably read or heard about the neutron that summer.
4. Szilard’s recollections of the “moonshine” quote come from “Memoirs,” dictated 1960, pp. 7–8 (LSP 40/10) and from “The Sensitive Minority Among Men of Science,” a speech delivered on December 7, 1954 (LSP 42/25). MIT Vol. II, pp. 17–18. See also Nature 132: 432–33, September 16, 1933.
His “chain reaction” idea occurred either the day after Rutherford’s speech or within a few weeks, depending on which of Szilard’s versions is true. It seems unlikely that he would be out walking the day he awoke with a bad cold, and other evidence also suggests at least a few days’ delay in his contemplations. “Memoirs,” dictated in 1960, p. 7 (LSP 40/10).
Szilard never said where or when he stopped for that red light. Southampton Row is six blocks long and has more than a dozen crossings with traffic lights. Szilard remembered the incident several different ways. In “Creative Intelligence and Society: The Case of Atomic Research, the Background in Fundamental Science,” a public lecture delivered on July 31, 1946, Szilard said his realization came in October 1933, “a week or two” after Rutherford’s speech; in “The Sensitive Minority . . .” he remembered that it came the afternoon he read about Rutherford’s speech—or September 12, 1933.
5. Szilard interview taped in New York, May 1960 (LSP 101/1–3). MIT Vol. II, p. 17.
6. Notes, “Rough Draft, Outline for Book,” June 1960 (LSP 30/9). MIT Vol. II, p. 17.
7. Nature, September 16, 1933, p. 433.
8. “Creative Intelligence and Society. . .” MIT Vol. I, p. 183.
9. Max Lerner, “Life of a Man,” New York Post magazine, “Page Four,” March
4, 1960, p. 34; Max Lemer interview, January 23, 1986.
10. The address was on the south side of the street, in a block since demolished. See October 18, 1933, letter from the AAC’s assistant secretary to Szilard (AAC SPSL Sect. 3, Drawer 8).
11. When free from thoughts about the atom, Szilard continued his errands for the AAC and the Jewish Board. On October 29, 1933, Szilard joined a panel of “academicians” to address a meeting of Jewish organizations. Speakers recounted the waves of dismissals from German universities to an audience that included the round-faced Wall Street investment banker Lewis L. Strauss, there to represent several Jewish groups from the United States. As Strauss remembered the gathering, “the impotence of the conference could never have been deduced from its trappings, which were those of an important international conference with committees and subcommittees, agendas, and rapporteurs.” Strauss and Szilard did not meet then, but would be drawn together five years later in two significant ways: first to explore medical and commercial uses for the atom, then to fret that Germany might already be making atomic bombs. But in 1933 the only person in the conference hall with such fears was Szilard himself. Strauss, p. 108.
12. Lady Charlotte Simon interview, May 27, 1986.
13. MIT Vol. II, p. 17.
14. “Reminiscences,” p. 101 (LSP 40/10).
15. See “Atomic Transmutation,” Nature, September 16, 1933, p. 433. Glasstone notes in Sourcebook on Atomic Energy (fn., p. 417) that Szilard’s “general ideas were correct” for a chain reaction (beryllium9 absorbs a neutron and gives off two to become beryllium8 and then splits into two helium4 atoms) but that it could not work in beryllium because the neutrons liberated had relatively low energies.
16. “Memoirs,” dictated in 1960, p. 8 (LSP 40/10). Glasstone, pp. 293–94. MIT Vol. II, pp. 17–18.
17. MIT Vol. II, p. 17.
18. Ibid., p. 18.
19. The director was C. C. Paterson. Szilard to Polanyi, December 11, 1933 (MPP 2/13).
20. Esther Simpson to the author, October 16, 1985. December 13, 1933, statement from Midland Bank, Russell Square Branch (LSP 75/8).
CHAPTER 11
1. Wigner to Polanyi, January 12, 1934 (MPP 2/14).
2. Wigner to Mrs. Michael Polanyi, October 7, 1933 (MPP 2/13). University of Wisconsin physicist Gregory Breit was making “unparalleled efforts” to help Szilard at NYU but confronted “a not very honorable feeling of nationalism” about supporting foreign scholars, Wigner reported. Wigner to Michael Polanyi, November 6, 1933, Bela Silard translation (MPP 2/13).
3. Szilard to Polanyi, December 11, 1933 (MPP 2/13).
4. Strauss, p. 164. Toni Stolper to Gertrud Weiss Szilard, September 13, 1968; copy in “Album” on AE-FDR letter (EWP).
5. In January 1934, Szilard reported to Polanyi “working out methods for the production of fast electrons” and meeting with Sir Hugo Hirst, the founder of General Electric (U.K.). By mid-February he applied for a patent on an
accelerator to produce “fast charged particles,” such as electrons or protons, but warned Hirst that there was no “immediate important application for fast electrons.” In fact, Szilard’s patent posed two concepts that would become standard in cyclotrons in years to come: frequency modulation and phase stability.
Although Szilard urged Hirst to have GE follow the “probably very fast development” in accelerators, his own thoughts were on the neutron chain-reaction concept.
6. The New York Times, January 29, 1933, Sect. 4, p. 1. Szilard had sent information to the AAC for a job in Bangalore and a few weeks later wrote to an acquaintance about “the Delhi vacancy.” Szilard reported having direct information “from friends in Delhi,” perhaps Gerda Philipsborn, with whom he had lived in Berlin. A few weeks later Szilard would report, “I have written to Delhi offering to visit Delhi if they should decide that they would rather have me in preference to other candidates, and that I could decide on the spot. The University of Delhi is not a full university but will possibly be developed into something of the sort in the future. I could probably become chairman of the department (which practically does not exist). There are no professorships, only readerships, and the salaries are very poor.”
Szilard to P. Gent, January 9, 1934, “Papers R [sic] Szilard sent to me for Bangalore application” and Note in the AAC files dated December 12, 1933 (AAC SPSL Sect. 4, Drawer 9, L. Szilard). Szilard to Michael Polanyi, January 29, 1934 (MPP 2/14).
7. “Memoirs,” dictated 1960, p. 9 (LSP 40/10).
8. MIT Vol. I, pp. 529 and 615. The third element to sustain a nuclear chain reaction, plutonium, is produced by bombarding uranium238 with neutrons. This would not be realized theoretically until 1940, and the element itself would not be discovered until 1941.
9. Szilard to Hirst, March 17, 1934. MIT Vol. II, p. 38.
10. MIT Vol. I, p. 722. Szilard to A. Benjamin, Electrical & Musical Industries, Ltd., December 31, 1934; A. Benjamin to Szilard, February 12, 1934, with technical quibbles about the “Microbook” patent (LSP 7/30).
11. Einstein to Thomas B. Appleget, March 14, 1934. RG 1.1, series 200D, box 153, folder 1881 (RAC). See also Weaver to Einstein, March 20, 1934 (AEP/P Box 27, 21 455).