Description
Book SynopsisIf science has the equivalent of a Bloomsbury group, it is the five men born at the turn of the 20th century in the same neighborhood in Budapest: Theodore von Karman, Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, John von Neumann, and Edward Teller. Through immigration from Hungary to Germany to the United States, they remained friends and continued to work together and influence each other throughout their lives. As a result, their work was integral to some of the most important scientific and political developments of the 20th century.They were an extraordinary group of talents: Wigner won a Nobel Prize in theoretical physics without ever having taken a formal college-level physics course, Szilard was the first to see that a chain reaction based on neutrons was possible but left physics to try to restrict nuclear arms, von Neumann could solve problems in his head for which most people needed computers, von Karman became the first director of NASA''s Jet Propulsion Lab, and Teller was the father of th
Trade ReviewThis is an important story that needs to be told, and Hargittai tells it well. Nature, November 2006.
The similarities between character and fate with the Martians are not the only thing that makes Hargittai well suited to the job of writing their biographies; he also writes clearly and with dry humour. 3-2006, Lab Times, p55.
Table of ContentsPreface ; Acknowledgements ; List of Plates ; Introduction ; 1. Arrival and Departure ; 1.1 Family Origin and Early Childhood ; 1.2 Gem and Less: Gimnazium Experience ; 1.3 Background in Hungary and First Transition ; 2 Turning Points in Germany ; 3 Second Transition: to the United States ; 4 "To Protect and Defend": World War II ; 5 To Deter: Cold War ; 6 Being Martian ; 6.1 Comparisons ; 6.1.1 Szilard and Fermi ; 6.1.2 Teller and Oppenheimer ; 6.2 Traits ; 6.3 Religion and Jewishness ; 6.4 Being Hungarian ; Epilogue ; Greatness in Science ; Had They Lived ; Conclusion ; Appendix: Quotable Martians ; Notes ; Select Bibliography ; Annotated Name Index ; Subject Index
