SZILÁRD, Leo
* 11. 2. 1898, Budapest, Hungary
† 30. 5. 1964, La Yolla, USA
Physicist
S. attended the Lutheran Grammar school in Budapest and was an officer-candidate during World War I. Following his father’s footsteps he began studying architecture at Budapest Technical University after the war. However, he preferred to follow his interest and began his engineering studies at Institute of Technology in Berlin. After graduation he got a job at the Emperor Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. There he explored the link between understanding and information. The publication issued in 1929 was a starting point of cybernetics. In 1933 S. immigrated to England and took a position at the University of Oxford where he focused on the areas of atomic physics and in particular on the neutrons. After the Munich agreement in 1938 he was of the opinion that England had become too dangerous and thus moved to the United States. Meanwhile, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman conducted successful nuclear fission experiment in Berlin and concluded that uranium would be the element capable of sustaining a chain reaction. S. recognized the risk associated with that. He shared his fears with Eugen Paul → Wigner, a Hungarian scientist, informing him that Albert Einstein intervened with the American president Franklin D. Roosevelt. Immediately afterwards, the U.S. government gave the initiative to start developing the American atomic bomb. S. and Italian scientist Enrico Fermi won the contract to construct the first neutronic reactor. The first successful experiments were carried out under the platform of sports field at the University of Chicago. The first nuclear reactor in the world was launched on 2nd December 1942. S. later protested against the use of the atomic bomb and actively fought the manufacture of atomic weapons after the war.
As a scientist S. later dealt with biology, while being a professor of biophysics at University of Chicago.
