Hungarian-American Jewish physicist and inventor (1898–1964)
He conceived the nuclear chain reaction, co-wrote the letter that launched the Manhattan Project, then spent the rest of his life trying to stop what he'd set in motion. Szilard's fingerprints are on the bomb and the petition begging Truman not to drop it.
Born in Budapest in 1898, Szilard studied engineering until World War I interrupted, then fled to Berlin and switched to physics, writing his doctoral thesis on Maxwell's demon and becoming the first to link thermodynamics with information theory. He filed early patents for the electron microscope and cyclotron, worked with Einstein on a refrigerator, then got out of Germany in 1933 the moment Hitler took power. In England he helped refugee scholars escape; in America by 1938 he was working with Fermi on chain reactions, present in the room when Chicago Pile-1 went critical in December 1942. H…
Sourced, dated quotes from Leo Szilard
It is not necessary to succeed in order to persevere. As long as there is a margin of hope, however narrow, we have no choice but to base all our actions on that margin.
In life you must often choose between getting a job done or getting credit for it.
Science is progressing at such a rapid rate that when you make a prediction and think you are ahead of your time by 100 years you may be ahead of your time by 10 at most.
Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs.
A great power imposes the obligation of exercising restraint, and we did not live up to this obligation.
The six component signals behind the Fame score, and their ranks across the leaderboards.
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