Leo Szilard - genius in the dark

Leo Szilard is a genius scientist but few people know. His inventions had a profound effect on the world, such as atomic bombs and the dismissal of some cancers with radiotherapy.

Leo Szilard - genius scientist

Leo Szilard (1898-1964) is a Hungarian-American physicist . He is the owner of the only patent on the atomic bomb . In 1932, neutron particles were discovered by James Chadwick in 1932. Soon after, Szilard invented and patented the idea of ​​a neutron-based chain reaction in 1933.

Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard (right) discussed the letter to US President Roosevelt.(Photo: OSTI)

This invention also describes the explosion phenomenon obtained from chain reactions . He kept it in secret by ceding the invention to the Royal Navy, for fear of German fascism.

Szilard tried to perform a nuclear chain reaction with several neutron-rich elements but failed. However, he did not try uranium decay. This was succeeded in 1938 by Otto Hahn, Nazi Germany and his colleagues, just a few months before World War II broke out.

During his time at university, Szilard attended Albert Einstein 's courses. It was Einstein who praised Szilard's doctoral thesis. In the late 1920s, they worked together to develop refrigerators without moving components and shared some patents in this area.

Family refrigerators that use this technology are often called Einstein-Szilard refrigerators or Einstein refrigerators. Many people will be surprised about the patent of Einstein in the refrigerator. However, these refrigerators are never commercially successful. During their lives, Einstein and Szilard were good friends.

After the nuclear disintegration was discovered in 1938, Szilard was one of the first to realize it was feasible to build nuclear weapons, and that the Allies needed to build weapons. Atomic before the Fascist faction can do it.

At this time, World War II has just begun. To express the urgency of the early creation of nuclear weapons, he decided to write a letter to President Franklin D Roosevelt. But Szilard knew he wasn't a well-known person so the letter was carefully considered. He did not want the letter to be lost or ignored. So he asked Einstein to sign the letter to increase its importance.

This letter was later passed on to President Roosevelt. This is the direct cause of the creation of Manhattan projects and atomic bombs. Unfortunately, this letter was later widely regarded as "Einstein's letter" , although Szilard was a writer, and Einstein was the only signer. In the picture above, this letter is called "Roosevelt letter" . In fact, it must be called "Szilard-Einstein letter ".

Szilard and Enrico Fermi, the inventor of the nuclear furnace , jointly implemented the Manhattan project. Fermi was an Italian physicist who won the 1938 Nobel Prize in physics. One of their first tasks in the Manhattan project was to build experimental evidence for a sustainable chain reaction in Chicago. 1942. This is the world's first nuclear reactor.

Szilard and Niels Bohr, a Danish physicist, joined the Manhattan project, imagining that nuclear bombs would be a means of world peacekeeping, even before a nuclear bomb could actually be make.

When two countries have nuclear bombs, no country can invade the other country. This is the only possibility for new nuclear bombs, and is the best solution to prevent war.

This explains why Szilard, Bohr and many other scientists want to share nuclear bomb technology to other countries, especially the Soviet Union. Many scientists working on nuclear bomb projects also believe that this is a superior weapon, creating a dictatorship if only one country owns it.

If this technology was not shared, Szilard and Bohr predicted that the cold war and nuclear arms race would happen as a consequence. History proved they were right.

US atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki, Japan in 1945. (Photos: Wikipedia)

Szilard wants nuclear bombs to be used only for the purpose of deterrence and containment. But knowing that the army wanted to bomb Japan, he argued fiercely with General Leslie Groves, the boss of Julius Robert Oppenheimer, the project manager of Manhattan. Oppenheimer was then a University of California Bekerley physics professor.

When Szilard got angry and yelled at Groves, he knocked Szilard out of the Manhattan project and wanted to imprison Szilard. He escaped from jail because of the support of many scientists working on the Manhattan project.

Szilard wrote another letter to President Roosevelt, explaining not to bomb Japan . But the president died a few days before the letter arrived. Szilard then tried to contact President Truman, but his letter never reached Truman, or had come but was ignored.

After the bombs were dropped on Japan, Szilard left nuclear physics and began working in the field of molecular biology.

Later, he was diagnosed with bladder cancer and doctors predicted he would be hard to get through. Using knowledge of radioactive and biological elements, Szilard invented a method of irradiation of cancer cells with gamma-ray radiation from the Cobalt isotope 60.

The doctors warned him that he would die from radiation, but on the contrary, he passed away. Szilard healed himself from cancer and recovered completely. This radiation therapy has since been used in medicine to treat some cancers.

Although Szilard's name is less well known to the public, many people in the history of science and nuclear physics know him well. There is a crater on the Moon named after him, but it is the crater on the far side of the moon, humans are never visible from the Earth. He was also honored in the list of American inventors in 1996.

There is an interesting detail in the series of sci-fi novels Old Man's War by author John Scalzi (Hugo award for best novel of 2006), soldiers of special forces carry the names of the houses Famous science such as Einstein, Pasteur, Dirac, Fermi, Sagan . In it, the general of these soldiers is named Szilard.

Leo Szilard and the book entitled "A Plan for Peace".(Photo: MotleyTech)

Among Szilard's colleagues, many have won the Nobel Prize or deserve a Nobel Prize. Many of them judged that he was brilliant, independent and creative. Eugene Wigner (Nobel Prize in 1963) wrote that, if only ideas were needed, Szilard had done the whole Manhattan project alone.

Szilard is the central character of the first atomic bomb. He is the father of the atomic bomb, and always recognizes that atomic bombs are weapons for peacekeeping, not weapons for destruction. Atomic bombs bring balance to the world, a means to prevent all wars, as he dreams from the early days of the world without an atomic bomb.

It is no coincidence that there is no major war between nations possessing nuclear weapons. It is not because of the great world, all nations are friends. It is because of the fear of an overall atomic war, completely destroying these countries.

Leo Szilard was the one who eliminated major conflicts and world war, invented nuclear power plants, and most of all invented a method to treat some cancers. In this world, only a few people have such great influence. But, sadly, very few people know him.