
The dubious distinction, and literary legacy, of Leo Szilard - whocansay
https://hazlitt.net/longreads/nuclear-fail
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beefman
Bizarre and ultimately bad essay. The author seems to want to convince us that
she knows more about Szilard than she will ever tell. She calls Szilard "Leo"
while referring to everyone else by surname. She's dismissive of Szilard and
his legacy without ever giving evidence the man was less than a genius. She
twice mentions Szilard's insistence on designing his own radiotherapy, but
fails to mention that this saved not only his own life, but became standard
and saved countless lives subsequently (including that of my maternal
grandfather).

~~~
keithpeter
Perhaps worth mentioning that Paul Erdős had a somewhat vagabondish lifestyle
as well - I suspect refugee experience.

Back in the early 80s, Rudolf Peierls did a talk to about a hundred of us at
Birmingham University about the war, quantum mechanics and Heisenberg. It must
have seemed desperate in 1940 in the dark days with worries about family &c.

~~~
pvitz
Edit: Confused Ulam and Szilard

~~~
pvg
I think you're confusing Ulam with Szilard. I'm not sure Szilard even comes up
in _Indiscrete Thoughts_

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ejlangev
Szilard features prominently in Richard Rhodes' "The Making of the Atomic
Bomb." Definitely worth the read if you have an interest in early nuclear
science. Really filled in a lot of details about scientists that I remember
learning about in school but never knew much about personally. Highly
recommend it!

~~~
atombender
Superb book, perhaps the finest non-fiction book I've had the pleasure of
reading. I love the way he is able to create a narrative that goes all the way
back to H. G. Wells to find its roots.

Rhodes' follow-up, "Dark Sun: The Making Of The Hydrogen Bomb", basically
continues the story where TMAB left off. The narrative gets a bit more
fractured and factual, focused on the question of how to safeguard nuclear
weapons and what their political/military/diplomatic purpose is. But it does
wrap up the J. Robert Oppenheimer story.

Once one has read these two, I strongly recommend "American Prometheus: The
Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer" [2] by Bird and Sherwin. Also
extremely well written.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Sun-Making-Hydrogen-
Bomb/dp/0684...](https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Sun-Making-Hydrogen-
Bomb/dp/0684824140)

[2] [https://www.amazon.com/American-Prometheus-Triumph-
Tragedy-O...](https://www.amazon.com/American-Prometheus-Triumph-Tragedy-
Oppenheimer/dp/0375726268)

~~~
disantlor
we have the same bookshelf apparently! have you read any other non-fiction
greatest hits tomes, like Power Broker?

~~~
vpribish
as we all have the same bookshelf here, the next brick over on mine is Daniel
Yergin's "The Prize". amazing work on the history of oil

~~~
stochastician
"The Prize" is fantastic, as is the associated (7 hour!) PBS-produced
documentary that's available in its entirety on youtube.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1stQW6i1Ko](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1stQW6i1Ko)
The actual in-person interviews with oil execs who were in the room during
nationalization are amazing!

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pvg
That's an interesting focus on his schlubbiness but in a way it makes it even
more curious that, over the long term he was more (and more fundamentally)
influential than most of his much more politically and socially savvy
colleagues. Even if you just take the start and end points - set the gears
that led to the Manhattan project in motion, convinced the leaders of the two
nuclear superpowers to install a hotline, it's not half bad, for a Martian.

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arethuza
I love the description by Richard Rhodes of Szilard's crossing of the road in
London when he realised the possibility of a chain reaction:

 _" The stoplight changed to green. Szilard stepped off the curb. As he
crossed the street time cracked open before him and he saw a way to the
future, death into the world and all our woes, the shape of things to come"_

[https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-
wavefunctio...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-
wavefunction/leo-szilard-a-traffic-light-and-a-slice-of-nuclear-history/)

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oldmartian
This article is riddled with errors. Voice of the Dolphins contained 4 short-
stories. Article says 8. Seriously?

~~~
andrewl
She also calls Nikita Khrushchev _Nikolai Kruschev_.

~~~
oldmartian
Yes, error after error. The intent of the article, clearly, is to attack
Szilard. It poses as a review of Voice of the Dolphins, but there's little
evidence that she even read it.

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cafebeen
While there are some amusing anecdotes in the article, the characterization of
Szilard as a failure is baffling.

