William Lanouette

I finished William Lanouette's Genius in the Shadow's: A Biography of Leo Szilard, the Man Behind the Bomb.

A found Szilard a difficult man to get a grip on. A genius but easily distracted, he moved from one idea to the next often expounding a great theory but often not going to the next level validate this thoughts, often passing them on to other's some of which achieved Nobel Prizes from the seed he planted.

Born in Hungary, later refusing to go back due to the fascist regime of Admiral Horthy and afterward because of what he saw as the legacy of this regime. HE served in the Austrian Army in World War I, attained Germany Citizenship in the day of the Weimar Republic, only later to leave because of the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party, later to emigrate to the England and later the United States where he became a naturalized citizen. He achieved his Ph.D. under the friendly guidance of Albert Einstein in Physics, after struggling between his father's wish of pursuing engineering.

An early visionary of the potential of nuclear fission to be both a source of energy and as a destructive force in the body of the atomic bomb and later the hydrogen bomb. He was one of those who encourage Einstein to write the now famous letter to President Franklin Roosevelt encouraging him to invest in the making of an atomic bomb. He was instrumental along with Enrico Fermi and developing the first atomic pile in Chicago and foresaw the earlier the value in both Uranium 235 and Plutonium as potential fuel for bombs.

Due to being an immigrant and a Jew and being a non conformist feel out with General Groves and was post World War II, blackballed from many posting in nuclear physics. Which along with his natural tendencies led him to to continue a trend of moving from one post to another without achieving a full time academic post in many of the institutions and facilities he worked in.

He struggled to stay on a singular course dabbling in physics, engineering, biology and social justice during he long career. He was after World War II among the vocal scientists, who were involved in the creation of the Atomic Bomb to push for Arms Control.

A fascinating multi-faceted and who had careers in numerous different disciplines. Not always easy to like and hard to understand but worth of time to study and strive to understand for the uniqueness he brough to the world of Science.… (meer)