Leo Szilard

Szilard, Leo 

Born Feb. 11, 1898, in Budapest; died May 30, 1964, in La Jolla, Calif. American physicist.

Szilard studied at the Budapest Institute of Technology and the University of Berlin, graduating from the latter in 1922. He worked at the university from 1925 to 1932. In 1933 he went to England, and from 1935 to 1938 he conducted research at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital (London) and at Clarendon Laboratory (Oxford). From 1939 to 1942 he worked at Columbia University in New York, and from 1942 to 1946 at the Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago, where he became a professor in 1946.

Szilard’s research dealt mainly with nuclear physics. In 1934, working with T. Chalmers, he discovered the effect of the cleavage of the chemical bond under neutron bombardment (the Szilard-Chalmers effect). In 1939, along with others, he demonstrated the possibility of carrying out a nuclear chain reaction with fission of uranium nuclei. Together with E. Fermi, he determined the critical mass of U–235 and took part in the design of the first nuclear reactor (1942). Szilard opposed the use of the atomic bomb and advocated a total ban on nuclear testing. Beginning in 1946, he worked in biophysics and molecular biology.

REFERENCE

“Leo Szilard.” Physics Today, 1964, vol. 17, no. 10, p. 89.

I. D. ROZHANSKII