Genius in the Shadows
A Biography of Leo Szilard, the Man Behind the Bomb
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Well-known names such as Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Edward Teller are usually those that surround the creation of the atom bomb. One name that is rarely mentioned is Leo Szilard, known in scientific circles as “father of the atom bomb.” The man who first developed the idea of harnessing energy from nuclear chain reactions, he is curiously buried with barely a trace in the history of this well-known and controversial topic.
Born in Hungary and educated in Berlin, he escaped Hitler’s Germany in 1933 and that first year developed his concept of nuclear chain reactions. In order to prevent Nazi scientists from stealing his ideas, he kept his theories secret, until he and Albert Einstein pressed the US government to research atomic reactions and designed the first nuclear reactor. Though he started his career out lobbying for civilian control of atomic energy, he concluded it with founding, in 1962, the first political action committee for arms control, the Council for a Livable World.
Besides his career in atomic energy, he also studied biology and sparked ideas that won others the Nobel Prize. The Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, where Szilard spent his final days, was developed from his concepts to blend science and social issues.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The shadows that have obscured physicist Szilard (1898-1964) have, ironically, been cast by the monuments of the atomic age his work catalyzed: the Cold War, nuclear power and such icons as Robert Oppenheimer. In this comprehensive study, science writer Lanouette and Silard, the subject's brother, cast welcome light on the physicist's career and character. The Hungarian-born Szilard was at the epicenter of the Manhattan Project--indeed, he patented the first reactor design with Enrico Fermi--but his concern over the destructive uses of atomic power (and a degree of personal eccentricity) isolated him from the celebrity (and Nobel prizes) that came to other founding fathers of quantum physics. Though the authors' fine brushstrokes--such as their record of what the physicist and his brother ate for dinner one night in 1923--sometimes overwhelm their portrait of Szilard himself, readers will find Szilard to be a ``curious and human character'' whose engagement with his work and its consequences was so profound that it can make other figures of the era seem hollow. Photos not seen by PW .
