by P. D. Smith
52. A. Vibert Douglas, The Life of Arthur Stanley Eddington (London: Nelson, 1956), 93–4.
53. Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung (14 Dec. 1919); reproduced in Smith (2003), 100. The photographer was Suse Byk.
54. Einstein to Zangger, Dec. 1919, CP9, doc. 217, trans. vol., 186.
55. Einstein to Mileva Marić, in Peter Michelmore, Einstein: Profile of the Man (London, 1963), 82.
56. Einstein to Zangger, 24 Dec. 1919; in CP9, doc. 233, p. 326; my trans.
57. Alexander Moszkowski, Conversations with Einstein, trans. Henry L. Brose (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1972; 1st edn 1921), 24.
58. Rutherford, ‘Collision of a Particle with Light Atoms: IV. An Anomalous Effect in Nitrogen’, Philosophical Magazine, 37 (1919), 581–7; cited in Emilio Segrè, From X-Rays to Quarks: Modern Physicists and Their Discoveries (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1980), 110.
59. Brian Cathcart, The Fly in the Cathedral: How a Small Group of Cambridge Scientists Won the Race to Split the Atom (London: Viking, 2004), 28.
60. Ruth Lewin Sime, Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 111.
61. Moszkowski, 36.
62. Einstein, in ‘Die Urteile der deutschen Gelehrten’, Berliner Tageblatt (25 July 1920), 4; from CP7, doc 43, p. 339; my trans.
63. Moszkowski, 37.
64. J. J. Connington, Nordenholt’s Million (London: Penguin, 1946; 1st edn 1923), 126, 127–8.
65. Moszkowski, 37.
Chapter 8
1. William Lanouette with Bela Silard, Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, The Man Behind the Bomb (University of Chicago Press, 1994; 1st edn 1992), 49.
2. ibid.
3. Recounted by George Klein to Lanouette; ibid., 50.
4. Edward Shils, ‘Leo Szilard: A Memoir’, Encounter, 23 (Dec. 1964), 35.
5. Szilard, CW2, 14.
6. Lanouette, 458.
7. Otto Friedrich, Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 13.
8. Alexandra Richie, Faust’s Metropolis: A History of Berlin (London: HarperCollins, 1999), 326.
9. On Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz and Berlin in this period, see P. D. Smith, ‘Science and the City: Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz’, London Magazine, 39 (Apr./May 2000), 27–36.
10. Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday (London: Cassell, 1943), 238.
11. Victor Weisskopf, The Joy of Insight: Passions of a Physicist (New York: Basic, 1991), 46.
12. Friedrich, 5.
13. ibid., 6.
14. Einstein to Adolf Hurwitz, 4 May 1914; in CP8, doc. 6 (trans. vol.).
15. Otto Hahn, My Life, trans. Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins (London: Macdonald, 1970), 133–4.
16. Max Born, My Life: Recollections of a Nobel Laureate (London: Taylor & Francis, 1978; 1st edn 1975), 194.
17. Szilard, taped interview, May 1960; in CW2, 8.
18. M. Polanyi to Szilard, 18 May 1961; in Leo Szilard Papers, Mandeville Special Collections Library, Geisel Library, University of California, San Diego, box 15, folder 18; quoted in David A. Grandy, Leo Szilard: Science as a Mode of Being (Lanham, Md: University Press of America, 1996), 19. Polanyi already knew Szilard, as they were members of the Galilei Circle in Budapest.
19. Szilard, taped interview, May 1960; in CW2, 8.
20. Philipp Frank, Einstein: His Life and Times, trans. George Rosen (New York: Knopf, 1947), 241.
21. ibid., 112.
22. William O. McCagg, Jr, Jewish Nobles and Geniuses in Modern Hungary (Boulder, Colo.: Columbia University Press, 1986), 221.
23. Eugene P. Wigner and Andrew Szanton, The Recollections of Eugene P. Wigner (New York: Plenum, 1992), 71.
24. Frank, 112.
25. Wigner and Szanton, 71.
26. ibid., 17.
27. Friedrich, 11.
28. Wigner and Szanton, 70.
29. ibid., 97.
30. Einstein to Paul Ehrenfest, before 10 Sep 1920; in CP7, 107.
31. Wigner and Szanton, 71.
32. Frank, 110.
33. ibid., 118.
34. ibid., 113.
35. Wigner and Szanton, 95.
36. Rabinowitch, in Arnulf K. Esterer and Louise A. Esterer, Prophet of the Atomic Age: Leo Szilard (New York: Julian Messner, 1972), 27.
37. Shils, 37.
38. Lanouette, 83.
39. Wigner and Szanton, 96.
40. ibid., 121.
41. Szilard, taped interview, 1963; in CW2, 9.
42. Wigner and Szanton, 98.
43. Lanouette, 59.
44. Szilard, taped interview, 1963; in CW2, 9.
45. ibid.
46. ibid., 9–11.
47. ibid., 11.
48. ibid. See also Szilard, ‘On the Decrease of Entropy in a Thermodynamic System by the Intervention of Intelligent Beings’ (1929); in CW1, 103–19, 120–29. See too the discussion of this in Charles H. Bennett, ‘Demons, Engines and the Second Law’, Scientific American, 257 (Nov. 1987), 88–96.
49. Quoted in J. Bronowski, The Ascent of Man (London: Book Club Associates, 1979; 1st edn 1973), 254.
50. ‘Warfare of the Future: The Radium Destroyer’, The Electrical Experimenter (Nov. 1915), 315.
Chapter 9
1. Eugene Rabinowitch, ‘[James Franck] 1882–1964; [Leo Szilard] 1898– 1964’, BAS, 20 (1964), 18. (The title of this joint obituary has pictures of Franck and Szilard in place of their names.)
2. Rabi; quoted in William Lanouette with Bela Silard, Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, The Man Behind the Bomb (University of Chicago Press, 1994; 1st edn 1992), 176.
3. George Marx, The Voice of the Martians (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1997), 166–7.
4. Dennis Gabor, ‘Leo Szilard’, BAS, 29 (Sep. 1973), 52.
5. ibid.
6. Alice Kimball Smith, ‘The Elusive Dr Szilard’, Harper’s Magazine, 221 (July 1960), 77.
7. N[orman] C[ousins], ‘The Many Facets of Leo Szilard’, Saturday Review (29 Apr. 1961), 15.
8. Edwin M. McMillan to Wilfred Mann, 3 Jan. 1952; quoted in J. L. Heilbron, Lawrence and His Laboratory: A History of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 199.
9. Marx, 162.
10. Eugene P. Wigner and Andrew Szanton, The Recollections of Eugene P. Wigner (New York: Plenum, 1992), 93, 94.
11. ibid., 98.
12. Lanouette, 54.
13. ibid., 55.
14. Wigner and Szanton, 121.
15. Szilard, interview, New York 1960; in CW2, 3.
16. Lanouette, 25. Lanouette’s biography is an invaluable source on this early period of Szilard’s life.
17. ‘Anent Warlike Inventions’, The Electrical Experimenter (Nov. 1915), 315.
18. Rabinowitch, 20.
19. Lanouette, 30.
20. Austin Hall, ‘The Man Who Saved the Earth’, Amazing Stories, 1 (Apr. 1926); in Groff Conklin, ed., The Golden Age of Science Fiction (New York: Bonanza, 1980; 1st edn 1946), 668–703, here p. 682. Hall’s story first appeared in All-Story Weekly in 1919.
21. Szilard, taped interview (1963); in CW1, 527.
22. Gene Dannen, ‘Leo Szilard the Inventor’, lecture, Leo Szilard Centenary, Eötvös University, Budapest, Hungary, 9 Feb. 1998; see http: //www.dannen.com/budatalk.html. Dannen’s website is an excellent resource on Szilard.
23. Leo to Bela, Oct. 1926; quoted in Gene Dannen, ‘The Einstein–Szilard Refrigerators’, Scientific American (Jan. 1997), 75.
24. For example, the Nov. 1915 issue of Gernsback’s Electrical Experimenter carried an illustrated article on ‘The Electro-Magnetic Gun and its Possibilities’, pp. 309–11.
25. Dannen, 78; see also Marx, 167–8.
26. Shelley Nickels, “‘Preserving women”: Refrigerator Design as Social Process in the 1930s’, Technology and Culture, 43 (Oct. 2002), 696, n5.
27. B. Feld and Leo Szilard, ‘A Magnetic Pump for Li
quid Bismuth’, Report CE-279 (14 July 1942); in CW1, 351–58. The report was declassified on 27 Feb. 1951.
28. Szilard, ‘Short Memorandum on Bismuth Cooled Power Unit’, Report CP-360 (23 Nov. 1942); in CW1, 361.
29. S. L. Sanger, Working on the Bomb: An Oral History of WWII Hanford (Portland, Oreg.: Continuing Education Press, 1995), 162, 48–9.
30. Szilard, ‘Liquid Metal Cooled Fast Neutron Breeder’, Report MUC-LS-60 (6 Mar. 1945); in CW1, 371.
31. ‘The Breeder Reactor’, Scientific American, 186 – 7 (Dec. 1952), 58–60.
32. NanoCoolers, ‘Liquid-Metal Cooling Technology for CPU Cooling’, http: //www.nanocoolers.com/technology–liquid–new.php.
33. James Busse, ‘Silent Sea Engine for Nuclear Subs’, Popular Science (Jan. 1966), 113–15; ‘Magnetic Propulsion May Be Ready for Small Subs’, Product Engineering (24 Feb. 1969).
34. Ruth Lewin Sime, Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 103.
35. Otto Friedrich, Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 189.
Chapter 10
1. Leo Szilard, Brandeis University Bulletin (Feb. 1954), 6–7; quoted in William Lanouette with Bela Silard, Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, The Man Behind the Bomb (University of Chicago Press, 1994; 1st edn 1992), 104.
2. Szilard, ‘Answers to Questions’, dictated 9 May 1963; in CW2, 229.
3. George Gamow, Thirty Years That Shook Physics (New York: Dover, 1985; 1st edn 1966), 51.
4. Paul Dirac, ‘Recollections of an Exciting Era’, in C. Weiner, ed., History of Twentieth Century Physics: Proceedings of the International School of Physics ‘Enrico Fermi’, vol. 57 (New York: Academic Press, 1977), 134; quoted in Emilio Segrè, From X-Rays to Quarks: Modern Physicists and Their Discoveries (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1980), 130.
5. Quoted in Richard P. Feynman, Don’t You Have Time to Think? (London: Penguin, 2005), p. xii.
6. Einstein to Bohr, 2 May 1920; in Niels Bohr, Collected Works, vol. 3, The Correspondence Principle (1918–1923), ed. J. Rud Nielsen (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1976), 634.
7. Einstein to Conrad Habicht, 18 or 25 May 1905; in CP5, trans. vol., 20.
8. Einstein to Born, 4 Dec. 1926; in Max Born, The Born–Einstein Letters 1916–1955: Friendship, Politics and Physics in Uncertain Times, trans. Irene Born (London: Macmillan, 2005; 1st edn 1971), 88.
9. Einstein to Born, 29 Apr. 1924; in Born, 80.
10. Gamow, 167.
11. John Canaday, The Nuclear Muse: Literature, Physics and the First Atomic Bombs (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000), 268, n.
12. Goethe, Faust: A Tragedy, trans. Walter Arndt (New York: Norton, 1976), lines 382–3. On the role of science in the play, see P. D. Smith, ‘Scientific Themes in Goethe’s Faust’, in Paul Bishop, ed., A Companion to Goethe’s Faust (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2001), 194–220.
13. The Blegdamsvej Faust is on microfilm 66 of the Archive for the History of Quantum Physics (American Philosophical Society). An English version, together with the illustrations, is in Gamow. This quotation from it is in Canaday, 87.
14. Canaday, 80.
15. Bohr, quoted in Robert Ehrlich, Eight Preposterous Propositions (Princeton University Press, 2005), 5.
16. Gamow, 207.
17. Canaday, 100.
18. James Whale, dir., The Invisible Man (Universal, 1933).
19. Gamow, 213.
20. Rutherford, quoted in Ruth Lewin Sime, Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 111.
21. See Chadwick’s Nobel acceptance speech, ‘The Neutron and its Properties’, 12 Dec. 1935: http: //nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/1935/chadwicklecture.pdf.
22. See Brian Cathcart, The Fly in the Cathedral: How a Small Group of Cambridge Scientists Won the Race to Split the Atom (London: Viking, 2004), 209–13.
23. C. P. Snow, The Physicists (London: Macmillan, 1981), 85.
24. Rutherford, quoted in Jungk, Brighter Than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists (San Diego: Harcourt, 1986; 1st edn 1956), 59.
25. Langevin, quoted in Jungk, 50–51.
26. Hitler, quoted in John Cornwell, Hitler’s Scientists: Science, War and the Devil’s Pact (London: Allen Lane, 2003), 27.
27. Von Braun, quoted in Otto Friedrich, Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 238.
28. Von Braun, quoted in NASA, ‘The Robotic Exploration of Space’, Sect. 1, ‘Taking Off’, http: //solarsystem.nasa.gov/history/timeline.cfm?Section=1.
29. Imre Madách, The Tragedy of Man, trans. Iain MacLeod (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1993; 1st edn 1861), scene XIV, 149.
30. New York Post (24 Nov. 1945); in CW2, 3.
31. Szilard to Niels Bohr, 7 Nov. 1950; quoted in Barton J. Bernstein, ‘Introduction’, in Leo Szilard, The Voice of the Dolphins and Other Stories (Stanford University Press, 1992), 6.
32. Striker, quoted in S. Lessard, ‘The Present Moment’, New Yorker, 63 (13 Apr. 1987), 40.
33. Spender, in 1930; quoted in Friedrich, 306.
34. Striker, quoted in Lessard, 40.
35. ibid.
36. Leo Szilard to Einstein, 27 Sep. 1930; in Gene Dannen, ‘The Einstein– Szilard Refrigerators’, Scientific American (Jan. 1997), 78.
37. Szilard, CW2, 22.
38. Szilard, ‘Draft Proposal for Der Bund’, about 1930; CW2, 25.
39. ibid., CW2, 24.
40. Waldemar Kaempffert, Science, Today and Tomorrow (New York: Viking, 1945), 266.
41. Szilard, ‘Draft Proposal for Der Bund’, about 1930; CW2, 27.
42. ibid., 28.
43. H. G. Wells, The Open Conspiracy, and Other Writings (London: n. pub., 1933), 16, 11.
44. ibid., 93.
45. Szilard to H. G. Wells, 20 Feb. 1929; in David A. Grandy, Leo Szilard: Science as a Mode of Being (Lanham, Md: University Press of America, 1996), 137, n 25.
46. German original, unsere Aktion: Szilard to Einstein, 2 Apr. 1929; quoted in Grandy, 24.
47. Szilard to Wells, 1 Apr. 1929; quoted in Grandy, 138, n35.
48. H. N. Brailsford to Einstein, 31 Mar. 1930; quoted in Lanouette, 99.
49. Einstein to Brailsford, 24 Apr. 1930; in CW2, 22.
50. Szilard to Wigner, 9 Oct. 1932; in Leo Szilard Papers, Mandeville Special Collections Library, Geisel Library, University of California, San Diego, box 21 folder 4; whole letter quoted in Lanouette, 108.
51. Wigner to M. Polanyi, 18 Oct. 1932; quoted in Lanouette, 109.
52. Szilard, taped interview, May 1960; in CW2, 16–17.
53. Szilard, ‘Memoirs’, 1960; in Leo Szilard Papers, box 40, folder 10, pp. 2–4; quoted in Grandy, 27.
54. Szilard, in 1956, the year of Wells’s ‘last war’; in Leo Szilard Papers, box 42, folder 25; quoted in Grandy, 139, n43.
55. W. Warren Wagar, Terminal Visions: The Literature of Last Things (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), 110.
56. ‘W.L.R.’, ‘The World-Republic’, Academy, 86 (16 May 1914), 616.
57. Wells’s The World Set Free: A Story of Mankind (1914) has been inexplicably retitled The Last War for its publication in the otherwise excellent Bison Frontiers of Imagination series. All quotations are from this edition (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 55–8.
58. Stanley Baldwin, 10 Nov. 1932; in Parliamentary Debates, 5 th series, vol. 270, House of Commons (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1932), 631.
59. New York Herald (30 July 1921); quoted in H. Bruce Franklin, War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 95.
60. W. Mitchell, ‘Are We Ready for War with Japan?’, Liberty (30 Jan. 1932), 12; quoted in Franklin, 98.
61. Wells, The Last War, 59.
62. R. Ellis Roberts, ‘Mr Wells Let Loose’, Bookman, 46 (June 1914), 131–2.
63. Wells, The Last
War, 118.
64. ‘W.L.R.’, 616.
65. Quoted in John Huntington, ‘The Science Fiction of H. G. Wells’, in Patrick Parrinder, ed., Science Fiction: A Critical Guide (London: Longman, 1979), 47.
66. Jonathan Schell also explores this idea, in The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People (London: Allen Lane, 2004).
67. Wells, The Last War, 61.
68. On infected suicidal terrorists today, see Josh Schollmeyer, ‘Blood Feuds’, BAS, 61 (Nov./Dec. 2005), 8–9.
69. ‘The Cosmic Muse’, New Statesman (30 May 1914), 248–9.
70. Wells, The Last War, 149.
71. Yevgeny Zamyatin, We (London: Penguin, 1984; 1st 1924), 37.
72. Peter George, Dr Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (London: Souvenir, 1999; 1st edn 1963), 161.
73. Wells, The Last War, 150.
74. Roslynn D. Haynes, H. G. Wells: Discoverer of the Future. The Influence of Science on his Thought (London: Macmillan, 1980), 80.
75. Rutherford, ‘The Constitution of Matter and the Evolution of the Elements’, 1914 Hale Lecture, National Academy of Sciences, in The Smithsonian Report for 1915 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, Washington 1916); quoted in David Wilson, Rutherford: Simple Genius (London: Hodder, 1983), 388.
76. Brian Aldiss, in Warren Wagar, ‘H. G. Wells and the scientific imagination’, Virginia Quarterly Review, 65 (1989), 390.
77. Brian Easlea, Fathering the Unthinkable: Masculinity, Scientists and the Nuclear Arms Race (London: Pluto Press, 1983); cited in Linda Merricks, The World Made New: Frederick Soddy, Science, Politics, and Environment (Oxford University Press 1996), 7.
78. Soddy, The Interpretation of Radium: Being the Substance of Six Free Popular Experimental Lectures Delivered at the University of Glasgow (London: John Murray, 1912; 1st edn 1909), 251.
79. ibid., 236.
80. Wells, The Last War, 14–15.
81. ibid., 15.
82. ibid., 163.
83. William Cameron Menzies, dir., Things to Come (United Artists, 1936); the producer was Alexander Korda, another Hungarian émigré.
84. Soddy, The Interpretation of Radium, 252.
85. Wagar, ‘H. G. Wells and the Scientific Imagination’, 399.
