THE
TEN COMMANDMENTS OF LEO SZILARD
DR. RAY COOPER
It has been told that there were originally more than ten commandments that God gave to Moses. As Moses came down from mount Sinai carrying the heavy stones upon which the words were written, some have said he stumbled and fell and the stones were smashed. Several of the tablets were broken beyond repair, and only ten of the commandments survived. The fragments of the broken tablets have never been found, but the missing and garbled commandments may have been rediscovered by a small, overweight, Hungarian, Jewish, atomic scientist named Leo Szilard.
Szilard was one of the most accomplished, least known modern scientists.
He had several careers, all different, innovative, and brilliant. He also
managed to exasperate almost everyone he came in contact with. He was strange,
his mental processes were oblique and non-standard. He said, to succeed you
don't have to be much cleverer than others, just one day earlier. He was
certainly one day earlier, in recognizing that nuclear fission could lead to a
bomb, in alerting President Roosevelt to that fact, and in seeing more clearly
the horror of the a-bomb when used against people.
He threw off ideas wherever he went. He was not always good at following
up his ideas and turning them into reality, but when he was working on an
invention or trying to convince someone of his idea, he was very tenacious. In
the words of his friend Eugene Wigner, "the only man who ever baffled me
for a lifetime was Leo Szilard." His career was not like that of an average
scientist, one of writing and publishing papers. In fact, he only published
about 30 papers in the scientific literature and a number of classified reports
relating to the Manhattan Project. Instead he invented things and ideas. He was
a firm believer in the patent system and hoped to make money with his inventions
but probably did not. One of his first inventions was a method of refrigeration
with no moving parts which he patented with Albert Einstein. He invented and
patented the idea of a chain reaction in the mid thirties even before nuclear
fission was discovered. After Uranium was found to give off neutrons during the
fission process, Szilard and Fermi together patented the nuclear reactor and
Szilard later proposed the term "breeder" to describe a reactor which
produced more fuel than it burned. He also invented a lobbying group called the Council for a Livable World and thought up
the idea for the Washington-Moscow hot line. When his political activities led
General Groves to withdraw all government support from Szilard in nuclear
physics, he switched his interests to molecular biology and helped establish the
European Laboratory for Molecular Biology.
Szilard was one of the brilliant refugees driven from Europe by Hitler.
In addition, he was from that small elite group including Teller, Wigner, and
von Neumann who came from Hungary and were the products of the Budapest
Gymnasia. These four were called by their fellow scientists the
"Martians" because their ways seemed strange to the Americans and
because of their otherworldly brilliance. All were theoretical physicists,
friends of the world's leading scientist Albert Einstein, and steeped in
European culture and interests. They spoke Hungarian, which perhaps sounds like
Martian to some people.
In the Fall of 1940 Szilard was working furiously on many different
fronts. He was writing complaining letters to government contacts trying to
hurry the a-bomb project along; he was preparing to take a paid position for the
first time in many years, and he was making a record of his inventions to insure
credit before taking a job at Columbia University paid for by government funds.
With all of these balls in the air, he still found time to put down on paper his
semi-serious version of the Ten Commandments.
He wrote them in German with no thought, at the time, of publishing them.
He may have started them earlier, perhaps having gotten the idea for his own
version of the commandments from his friends Edward Teller and Carl Friedrich
von Weizsacker who had done something similar in Copenhagen in 1934. During
Szilard's lifetime, he was never happy with the attempts to translate the
commandments into English, so they were never published while he was alive.
After his death in 1964, Jacob Bronowski wrote them down in English as a
remembrance for some of Szilard's friends, but they went no further than a small
circle of physicists.
Bronowski's translation and the original German version of Szilard were
published in the opening pages of the book of recollections by Spencer R. Weart
and Gertrud Weiss Szilard "Leo Szilard: His Version of the Facts",
(1978). I first saw these commandments about ten years before the Weart/Szilard
book was published, framed and decorating the hallway of a famous physics
laboratory. I was greatly impressed, and copied them down one by one while
standing before them. After many moves, my handwritten copy has long been lost,
but I am still impressed by the ideas.
Bronowski's translation omits number five as being an untranslatable pun.
The translation listed here is very similar to that of Bronowski with some minor
variations, but the literal translation of number five will be given.
TEN COMMANDMENTS
by Leo Szilard
1.
Recognize the relationships between things and the laws which govern men's
actions, so that you know what you are doing.
2.
Direct your deeds to a worthy goal, but do not ask if they will achieve the
goal; let them be models and examples rather than means to an end.
3.
Speak to all others as you do to yourself, without regard to the effect you
make, so that you do not expel them from your world and in your isolation lose
sight of the meaning of life and the perfection of the creation.
4.
Do not destroy what you cannot create.
5.
Touch no dish unless you are hungry. (A pun that could read -
Do not turn to the court of law unless you are hungry).
6.
Do not desire what you cannot have.
7.
Do not lie without need.
8.
Honor children. Listen to their words with reverence and speak to them with
endless love.
9.
Do your work for six years; but in the seventh, go into solitude or among
strangers, so that the memory of your friends does not prevent you from being
what you have become.
10.
Lead your life with a gentle hand and be ready to depart whenever you are
called.
The fragments of the stone tablets that Szilard picked up are clearly
different in both substance and tone from those which Moses brought down. Beyond
the fact that they were written in German rather than Hebrew, they also seem to
be softer, not nearly so blunt and unequivocal as the Old Testament prophets are
wont to be. Even the "do nots" are modified to indicate that real life
here on earth is not only black and white.
The ten commandments which God gave to Moses thundered out of the harsh
desert of Egypt. Thou shall (You will) or Thou shalt not do certain things. All
of Szilard's commandments seem to recognize more clearly the complexity of our
world and adjust the commandments to take account of human situations. They seem
to be teachings rather than laws. Perhaps Szilard had himself in mind when he
allowed a little wriggle room in the commandments.
Of the original Ten Commandments, the first three establish the God who
speaks to Moses as the one, the only, the true God, and there shall be no other
higher Gods. This implies that these commandments, being the word of God, shall
be the highest law. Szilard has no need to set his commandments above all others
and asks only that they be accepted for what they are.
Besides the clear difference in tone, there is a considerable difference
in content. The first 5 commandments of Szilard are completely new ideas not
touched upon in the commandments in Exodus 20. Number 6 is a generalization but
clearly connected to Moses' 10th commandment, "Thou shalt not covet thy
neighbors house, --". Szilard's number 7 is a softening of the biblical
injunction "Thou shalt not bear false witness". He recognizes that
there may be occasions when a lie is necessary. In Szilard's 8th commandment he
recognizes that the world will soon belong to the children and would have us
honor them rather than "thy father and mother" which is the biblical
law.
The law of the God of Moses requires 6 days of labor and that you do no
work on the 7th day. Szilard's idea in his 9th commandment is quite different
and is aimed at a different problem. He says do your work for 6 years and
in the 7th do something different so you "can be what you have
become". This is clearly not a matter of resting but of recreating
yourself.
The final commandment put forward by Szilard also contains a new idea
which would never be expressed by the ancient Jewish prophets. It says
"Lead your life with a gentle hand". Don't take yourself too
seriously. Other people have a right to their lives and their ideas even though
you may think they are wrong. Be ready to give up life without regret or anger.
These words grew out of Szilard's experience. In his rough draft outline
for a book that was never published he states "Very often it is difficult
to know where one's set of values comes from, but I have no difficulty in
tracing mine to the children's tales which my mother used to tell me. My
addiction to the truth is traceable to these tales and so is my predilection for
'Saving the World'". He goes on to describe his school days "The set
of values of the society in which I lived in Budapest was conducive for a young
man to dedicate himself to the pursuit of science, and the poor quality of the
teaching of science at the universities in Hungary furnished stimulation to
independence of thought and originality." If the Hungarian universities
were poor, not so the High Schools or Gymnasia. All of the "Martians"
from Budapest gained their initial scientific interest and training from the
wonderful teachers in those schools.
Since Szilard was somewhat reluctant to publish these commandments,
particularly in English, the question arises as to how satisfied he was with
their statement. Further, how well did he follow these precepts? Like all of us,
our theoretical values are not always easily applicable to life's problems. A
look at Szilard's life will show that his personality often battled these
commandments, sometimes following them but at other times ignoring them as his
ambition or his appetites triumphed.
The first of Szilard's commandments emphasizes how things work and
connect together and the laws of human interaction. Recognize
the relationships between things and the laws which govern men's actions, so
that you know what you are doing. Strangely enough, this commandment, as it
is written, is morally neutral. It is an exhortation to understand how things
work and how people behave, presumably so you can have an influence. The
influence, of course need not be only for the good. A successful politician
would follow this
rule as would a dictator. Szilard's dilemma was to try to bring into balance the
new physical understanding about the nucleus, the psychology and sociology of
men about to lead their nations into a new world war, and his own moral
convictions. A physical scientist like Szilard is generally interested in how
nature works, but few are willing to spend much effort in understanding the
social and behavioral laws associated with the interaction of people.
Szilard understood a lot about the conduct of men, but he had very little
understanding of (or interest in) women. He felt that they were too emotional
and not ruled by the intellect as he was. His marriage was very unconventional
and he rarely lived with his wife.
He admitted that he had two great passions in life, science and politics.
He credited science with making it possible for him to earn his living. He
thought politics saved his life.
In his recollections he tells of one experience in 1930 when his
prescience and understanding of the laws of the conduct of men served him well.
"I reached the conclusion that something would go wrong in Germany very
early." he said. The major economists of Germany and France had a meeting
in Paris to decide how much in reparations for World War I Germany would
be forced to pay. One of the German representatives, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht who was
president of the Reichsbank, made the very surprising statement that Germany
could not pay any reparations unless it got its former colonies back. Szilard
saw immediately that the German leaders were playing hardball, and if they
thought they could get away with this first move, "things must be pretty
bad." He took all of his money out of a German bank and transferred it to
Switzerland. He later learned that he wasn't the only one who understood this
move of Schacht's to be bad news, since many other people, mostly depositors
living abroad, also moved their money out.
Eugene Wigner, one of Szilard's closest colleagues throughout his life,
believed that his friend did not understand human nature at all. He believed
Szilard to be extremely ambitious with a desire to be recognized and to attain
high office. He wanted to be the boss or director of the lab, or senator, or
president, perhaps philosopher king. He believed that society should be ruled by
an elite who had the right answers. Wigner said of Szilard "- he saw no
reason for stupid people to craft national policy. Bright people should; people
quite a bit like Leo Szilard". According to Wigner, "Szilard did not
understand human nature well enough to rule a vital group of scientists without
listening to them. Though he was capable of listening, he never did it
consistently." Szilard had initiated many of the ideas which went into the
first reactor built by Fermi under Stagg Field at the University of Chicago. His
foresight had made possible the tons of ultrapure carbon needed for the reactor,
but when Fermi had asked him to help with the dirty job of machining the
graphite, as he himself and his entire group was doing, Szilard refused,
believing it more important to sit at his desk and design the next reactor.
The connections between scientific findings and their application
industrially, militarily, and medically were always close to Szilards thoughts.
As early as 1934 he wrote a memorandum on the possible application of the
liberation of atomic energy. He had read H.G. Wells book "The World Set
Free" and was very impressed with the idea of energy from the nucleus of an
atom. He wrote that if experiments presently underway are successful "the
production of energy and its use for power production would be possible on such
a large scale and probably with so little cost that a sort of industrial
revolution could be expected." He had applied for several patents on
methods for transmuting chemical elements into radioactive materials for use in
the production of heat and power. He also envisioned the production of
artificial "radium" for medical purposes.
Thus Szilard clearly understood the connection of things, but he followed
his logic to the extreme, even when it made him look like a coward in the eyes
of his friends and colleagues. During the Cuban missile crisis, he believed that
there was a high probability that the Russians would use the missiles against
the U.S. He decided that it would be safer in Europe, so he packed a bag and
flew to Switzerland. He turned up unannounced at the European Laboratory for
Nuclear Research (CERN) where he stayed until the crisis was resolved. He was
criticized for his fear and for leaving his secretary behind without a thought,
but to him it was an entirely logical move and consistent with his belief that
the nuclear confrontation between the United States and Russia was inherently
unstable. He said, "If I were to stay in Washington (when the bombs fell)
and were to perish ... I would consider myself, not a hero but a fool".
Szilard often forgot his second commandment, Direct
your deeds to a worthy goal, but do not ask if they will achieve the goal; let
them be models and examples rather than means to an end. It is clear that he
directed his life towards worthy goals, the development of the atomic bomb to
beat Hitler, the struggle to keep the bomb from being used on people, and the
understanding of human biology. He was first and foremost a scientist, but his
passionate beliefs led him into the political arena where his acts seemed less
models and examples than means to an end.
After he heard from Wigner that Otto Hahn in Germany had discovered that
Uranium fissions and breaks into two pieces when bombarded by neutrons, he
thought immediately of his old idea about a chain reaction which would release
energy from the nucleus. He knew that if neutrons were released in the fission
event, there might be a chance that these neutrons would cause more fissions and
a chain reaction could be initiated. Since he, as well as others, knew that
Europe was just about to go to war, he considered it urgent to check out his
chain reaction idea while at the same time keeping any nuclear experiments
secret from Hitler. Other scientists, including Fermi, thought the probability
of a chain reaction was small and felt that there was no urgency about the
research and it should proceed systematically.
Szilard followed up his beliefs in every way possible. To keep as much of
the nuclear research as possible from Nazi Germany, he started writing letters
to his friends asking them not to publish the results of their research into
fission. At the same time he was racing to do his own research, sending a
telegram to England asking for a block of beryllium to slow down the neutrons in
his experiment and borrowing $2000 from a friend so that he could rent a gram of
Radium to produce the neutrons. He did this even before finding a place to do
the research. He had no institutional address, of course, but managed to talk
his way into Columbia University where the chairman of the physics department,
George Pegram, gave him permission to use their facilities for three months.
His experiment was ready in March of 1939 and was immediately successful
in finding neutrons emitted during the fission process. He noted, "That
night there was very little doubt in my mind that the world was headed for
grief". After his success, he met with Fermi (who had also been successful
in finding fission neutrons), Wigner, and Pegram to determine what their next
step should be. Szilard pushed very hard for withholding the results from
publication, but Joliot in France went ahead and published his research and the
scientists in Columbia decided, against Szilard's advice, to follow normal
procedure in science and publish. Szilard was warned by Columbia that if he
continued his objections to publications, he would lose the use of the Columbia
facilities.
Szilard wouldn't put it aside. He still felt that the research going on
in France, England and America on nuclear fission should be kept secret from
Hitler and that it should go forward at the greatest possible speed. Most people
would keep their head down, do their research and worry only about their career.
Not Szilard. He was determined to find the secret of nuclear fission, which he
had dreamed of since the early 30's, while at the same time denying that secret
to the Nazis whom he and his friends had fled Europe to escape. This is not
exactly making acts models and examples rather than means to an end.
The question was what to do to push forward with his agenda. He had no
permanent position, he was not well known in science because he had accomplished
relatively little, and he feared the Germans were ahead in the race because of
Otto Hahn's initial breakthrough. He had the friendship of the other
"Martians" from Hungary and most significantly, he had the confidence
of Albert Einstein with whom he had worked in Berlin and had patented several
refrigeration ideas. Einstein had a worldwide reputation and would be taken
seriously in anything that he proposed.
After he convinced Einstein of the need for a letter to president
Roosevelt, Einstein dictated the letter based on a draft by Szilard, and it was
sent through Dr. Alexander Sachs who had an entre to the White House. It was
this letter that initiated the Manhattan Project and the U.S. work on the atomic
bomb.
Afterward Szilard felt that the a-bomb project should have been his to
lead. After all, he thought of the idea of a chain reaction, he, through
Einstein, had alerted the federal government to the need for the project and had
gotten the first money, and finally his ideas, together with Fermi's, were the
basis for the first nuclear reactor. Thus Szilard felt that it was unfair that
he played only an insignificant role in the Manhattan Project, and he continued
to try to insert himself and his ideas concerning nuclear energy and the bomb
into government decision making throughout the war and afterwards.
Szilard's third commandment, Speak
to all others as you do to yourself, without regard to the effect you make, so
that you do not expel them from your world and in your isolation lose sight of
the meaning of life and the perfection of the creation, was one that he
found easy to follow. He was so eager to convince everyone of his ideas that he
spoke much more than he listened. When he first came to the United States and
was staying in New York, he would pester his friend Isador Rabi, a professor in
the Physics Department at Columbia University, to do experiments for him. Rabi
would say, "Please go away --- You have too many ideas. Please go
away." Szilard was unemployed at the time, but by his persistence, he
finally forced his way into a temporary position at Columbia.
He never worried about expressing only "safe" ideas and he
never forgot the moral dimensions of his work. Other men would see the practical
obstacles too clearly, and while believing that something should be done, would
end by doing nothing. Szilard, like Don Quixote would go ahead and tilt at the
windmill.
Einstein said of Szilard that he tended to overestimate the role of
rational thought in human interactions. He was an elitist and never hesitated to
say it. He believed that scientists, because of their education and truthfulness
were superior and more objective than other men. He argued that it is crazy to
say that one moron is as good as one genius, because that would imply that two
morons are better than one genius.
Szilard was appalled at the way Senator McCarthy treated scientists and
was very disturbed at the way the Atomic Energy Commission used security
clearances for what he considered political purposes. He satirized the
Oppenheimer hearings in a fictional account of anti-Communist hysteria. Even
though he disliked Oppenheimer personally, as several scientists did, believing
that he was hypocritical in arguing that scientists should leave national policy
to the government officials while pushing his own views strongly with those same
officials, he believed that the threat to Oppenheimer was a threat to all
scientists. He stated his convictions bluntly, "Classing Oppenheimer as a
Security Risk and subjecting him to a formal hearing is regarded by scientists
in this country as an indignity and an affront to all; it is regarded by our
friends abroad as a sign of insanity - which it probably is." His caustic
tongue and his penchant for satire led him to state "wouldn't arresting him
and shooting him be the only prudent course of action" (if they really
thought Oppenheimer would leak information to the Russians).
Szilard was a builder, not a destroyer. He clearly kept his fourth
commandment, Do not destroy what you cannot create. He built organizations for
research and for peace, but the idea of destroying cities and people was morally
repugnant to him.
Although Szilard would have been willing to use the a-bomb against
Hitler, he felt strongly that its use against civilians in Japan was wrong on
moral grounds. In his petition to the President of the United States he argues
that "a nation which sets the precedent of using (the atomic bomb) may have
to bear the responsibility of opening the door to an era of devastation on an
unimaginable scale". Because of the U.S. lead in atomic energy, he felt
that it had the solemn responsibility to mobilize the world to prevent a nuclear
arms race. He felt that this could only be done if our hands were morally clean.
In early 1945 Szilard was confident that the war with Germany was won and
began to worry about a postwar arms race with the Soviet Union. He believed that
the only way to head this off was for the United States to take the lead in
renouncing the use of the bomb against civilians. Again he went to Einstein and
asked for a letter to president Roosevelt requesting a meeting to try to head
off the use of the bomb against Japanese cities. Before any meeting could be set
up with the president however, Roosevelt died and Szilard's first attempt to
stop the bomb died with him.
Szilard next tried to set up a meeting with the new president by using
political connections through the Pendergast machine in Kansas City. After
Truman's appointment secretary learned the purpose of the meeting, he shunted
Szilard off to James Byrnes in South Carolina. Byrnes was completely
unsympathetic to the scientist's arguments, and Szilard knew that his second try
at stopping the use of the bomb had failed.
General Groves was extremely angry when he heard that Szilard had gone
outside of channels to try to interfere with plans to use the bomb against
Japan. By July Szilard was certain that it was too late to stop the use of the
bomb. Nevertheless, he thought it necessary for scientists to go on the record
stating the immorality of targeting Japanese cities. He prepared and circulated
several copies of a petition to the president asking that the bomb not be used
unless Japan had been given every opportunity to surrender and had refused, and
after the president had given full consideration to his moral obligations to the
country and to the world. The petition was signed by only 72 scientists, all
from the Chicago Met(allurgical) Lab. General Groves held the petition until it
was too late to have any impact on events, so Szilard's final attempt failed as
had the others.
Szilard's fifth commandment, Touch
no dish unless you are hungry was an interesting idea to him, but he was
clearly unable to follow it. He learned
to love food from his father who took a great interest in feeding the family
well. When Leo was a boy, the Spitz family (Leo's father later changed the
family name to Szilard) often served meals of six or more courses. Soup followed
by fatted goose liver appetizers and main courses of several vegetables with
roasted piglet, a fish with tarter sauce, rich Hungarian deserts and cheeses
with special pumpernickel bread and all ending with cups of cafe au lait or
strong Turkish coffee.
Szilard had a strong appetite which he was often unable (or just
unwilling) to control. Although he could be completely rational and say to
himself, Don't eat unless you are hungry, when confronted with candy or goose
liver or rich chocolate deserts, he would conveniently forget this 5th
commandment.
Leona Marshall Libby tells that when she first met Szilard in Chicago, he
was shaped like Santa Claus. "But no wonder he was more or less spherical.
I saw him eat as many as seven sherberts for dessert many evenings at the
Quandrangle Club, --" she said.
Although Szilard in his younger days was moderately slender, a photograph
of him taken with Jacques Monad three years before his death shows a roundness
which cannot be hidden.
One of Szilard's patent disclosures dated in 1953 was for an adding
machine built in the form of a mechanical pencil that could be carried in the
pocket. He proposed that it could be used, for instance, for adding up during
the day the caloric value of the various meals eaten. There is no indication
that this device was ever built, and if built that it was ever used.
The death of Leo Szilard on May 30, 1964 was attributed to a heart attack
during his sleep. His wife Trude requested an autopsy to see if his earlier
cancer had reoccurred. There was no sign of cancer, but when the doctors looked
at his heart, they found plenty of evidence that a lifetime of heavy eating and
little exercise had led to coronary arteriosclerosis and the coronary thrombosis
from which he died.
There is little evidence that the sixth commandment, Do
not desire what you cannot have was any problem for Szilard.
His world was a world of ideas, not one of things. He had almost no personal
property. He had a couple of suits, shoes which he wore until they came apart,
and suitcases which he left with friends in various parts of the world
containing his notes, papers, and letters. He never owned a home but stayed in
hotels or with friends wherever he went. He was sometimes short of money when he
hadn't been employed for some time, but he was never desperate, and he usually
had money to fly between Europe, England and America whenever it suited his
purpose.
Plato when speaking of his guardians, the leaders of his ideal republic,
said, "none of them must possess any private property beyond the barest
necessaries. Next, no one is to have any dwelling or store-house that is not
open for all to enter at will". Szilard seemed to unconsciously follow
these precepts in order to leave his mind free for what he considered to be
important.
Szilard in his seventh commandment, Do
not lie without need, clearly did not want to accept a flat prohibition
against telling a lie. He was sure that he could tell when a lie was necessary
and would refrain from lying except in those cases. Again, he saw himself as a
philosopher king who knew better than anyone when a lie was needed and proper.
As a scientist, he revered the truth and would not deviate from it under any
ordinary circumstances.
Plato gives the right to tell lies to the guardians of the republic. In
the Republic he says, "If anyone, then, is to practice deception, either on
the country's enemies or on its citizens, it must be the Rulers of the
commonwealth, acting for its benefit; no one else may meddle with this
privilege". It is hard to fault Szilard for being naive about human nature
after reading Plato.
Szilard clearly believed that there are times when it is morally
acceptable to lie for a greater purpose. It seems clear that he would have been
ready to lie to stop the use of the A-bomb on Japan if he thought that it would
make a difference. Still there are very few documented cases where Szilard was
found to have been untruthful for any reason. He was not really deceitful nor
did he play complex underhanded games. He didn't think it necessary. Although he
continually ignored the chain of command, he believed that as a civilian and a
scientist that was his right, and his opinion was as good or superior to that of
the military and General Groves in particular.
Szilard was awkward with most people, but with children he could be
playful and carefree. Thus his eighth commandment, Honor
children. Listen to their words with reverence and speak to them with endless
love. He enjoyed the company of children, but throughout his life, spent
very little time with them. He wrote a short fable for children called
"Kathy and the Bear" based on his friendship with the daughter of a
friend of Trude's during a visit to Colorado one Summer.
One reason Szilard found it easy to love children was that he interacted
with them only on his own terms. He never had any children of his own to be
responsible for, so they didn't interfere with his unusual lifestyle. In
addition, he wasn't threatened by children's ideas. They didn't argue with him
as many adults did.
Szilard and Friend 1948
In the opening lines of his Recollections he states that "Many
children are born with an inquisitive mind, -- I became a scientist because in
some ways I remained a child." It wasn't only the inquisitive mind that
remained with Szilard, but also certain naive beliefs in the purity of science
and the dedication of scientists to truth and the betterment of mankind.
Szilard's ninth commandment, Do
your work for six years; but in the seventh, go into solitude or among
strangers, so that the memory of your friends does not prevent you from being
what you have become, fit him perfectly. He did not need this commandment to
encourage him to move and go among strangers. He had no permanent address but
always lived out of a few suitcases in hotels. When he got bored or unhappy with
the surroundings, he would move. Although Wigner claimed not to understand
Szilard, he had a great deal of experience with his comings and goings. He
described it this way "He came to stay with you because he missed you and
hated cooking for himself; then he left because the bed was too hard and he was
tired of you."
It was rare for Szilard to stay in any one spot for more than six years.
In 1919 he left Hungary and went to Berlin to study and escape the anti-Semitism
which was allowed and encouraged by the Horthy regime. He received his doctorate
with highest honors in 1922 and then served as an assistant for three more years
before he began his career on his own as an instructor in physics.
For the next six years he collaborated with Einstein, taught quantum
mechanics with John von Neumann, taught seminars with Lisa Meitner, and filed
patents on a cyclotron, an electron microscope, and the Einstein-Szilard
pump for refrigerators. At the end
of this six year period in 1933 he fled to England to escape the Nazis and
Hitler's anti-Semitism.
It was in London, waiting for a street light to change, that the idea for
a neutron chain reaction came to him. He continued to invent things in England
including one of his most important pieces of scientific work, the
Szilard-Chalmers reaction. He obtained a refugee fellowship to Oxford and
continued his research there until 1939 when he moved to New York, anticipating
that world war II was about to begin.
He didn't stay in New York for the allotted six years but moved to
Chicago in 1942 to help Fermi build the first reactor. In Chicago he became
close friends with Chancellor Hutchins and called upon him many times for help
with his projects. In 1947 he again changed directions and decided to leave
physics and take up biology, establishing his own laboratory at the University
of Chicago.
In 1951 he took a big step and married his long-time friend Gertrude
Weiss. He never settled into any sort of domestic routine though and spent his
time in the laboratory studying phage and the mutation of bacteria. It was said
of him that he lived in a hotel in New York, worked in Chicago, and was married
to a wife in Denver.
After spending time in Washington, where he hoped, as he put it, "to
find a market for his wisdom", he moved again. He was unsuccessful in
Washington as the Kennedy administration felt that they had all the wisdom they
needed. His last move was to the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. Here he
found, for the first time in his life, a permanent lifetime appointment and
security. He became content for a few months. Then he died.
Szilard lived his life the way he wanted to, and his final commandment, Lead
your life with a gentle hand and be ready to depart whenever you are called, seemed
to fit him well. With all of the
controversies and the political battles, he never carried any personal animosity
towards anyone except perhaps General Groves. When one path towards his goal was
blocked, he tried another. He did not gnash his teeth and strike at his enemies
but soldiered on in new directions. Although he argued with everyone, in his
strange way, he was friendly with all of his colleagues. He tried to steer
Teller into supporting Oppenheimer during his security hearings even though he
liked Teller personally much better than he liked Oppenheimer. Szilard's friends
were often angry with him, but they recognized him as a force of nature which
would not be changed.
In the late 1950s Szilard was diagnosed as having bladder cancer. Then,
as perhaps now, this was a very difficult cancer to treat and the prognosis for
cure was very poor. Two options for treatment were offered, surgery or
radiation. Neither had a very good record of success, and there was no consensus
among the doctors about which method was best.
Szilard decided to take his own case in hand and make his own decisions.
It was his life on the line, and he believed he could understand the situation
as well as anyone could. He asked his friend, who incidently was his wife and a
physician, to find out from the medical literature which method had the best
record for cures. The results were about fifty-fifty and did not offer much hope
for either method.
After carefully weighing what he knew, he decided in favor of the
radiation treatment but one of his own devising. He decided against surgery for
several reasons; first he would lose all control of the operation once under the
anesthesia, secondly he didn't understand surgery but he did understand
radiation, and finally he believed that if the surgery were unsuccessful he
would not be able to continue working until he died, but if the radiation didn't
work he could still function until the inevitable happened.
Radiation treats cancer by killing the cancer cells in the irradiated
region. Of course, it also kills the healthy cells through which it penetrates.
Szilard knew that beta particles had only a short range compared to gamma and
x-rays but a much higher ionization and thus killing potential within that
range. Thus with help from his friends at Brookhaven National Laboratory he had
short lived beta emitting compounds prepared that were chosen with chemical
properties which would cause them to be concentrated in the bladder. With this
method he could limit the radiation primarily to the cells he wanted to kill and
also control the dose to the cells by the short lifetime of the beta emitters.
The treatment was a total success and the autopsy performed after his
death showed that there was no cancer remaining in his body.
Leo Szilard was a unique combination of opposites. He had the imagination
and sometimes the naivete of a child but also the boldness and bluntness of a
man. He loved science but his politics often took precedence. He was at once a
thinker and an activist. Like many of us, he wanted it all. His character was
shaped in his youth by the European intellectual tradition and in his adulthood
by the global conflict and the worldshaking discoveries in nuclear physics. His
ten commandments were a thoughtful expression of his middle age, and he followed
them when he could.
Amazingly, for all of Szilard's ideas, arguments, and inventions, he
never won the Nobel Prize or held any administrative post of distinction. While
he received many honors including an honorary doctorate by Brandeis University,
the Atoms for Peace Award together
with Eugene Wigner in 1960 and election to the National Academy of Sciences in
1961, he felt that these were insufficient recognition for his contributions.
Although the $37,500 that came with the Atoms for Peace award was greatly
appreciated by Szilard, he felt all of his life that his contributions were not
properly recognized and that he deserved more honors and more money.
In one sense, his life can be written as tragedy. He had little influence
on the direction of the Manhattan Project which he was influentially in
starting, and his efforts to stop the bomb being used against Japan in the
waning days of the war were unsuccessful. He was an outsider in Washington, and
his efforts to push through arms control and reduce tension with the Soviet
Union were largely ineffective. Even his private life was far from the American
dream, no house, no car, no wife and kids, no permanent job, and most of his
life embroiled in controversy.
Perhaps he tried to do too much. If after the war he had left the
politics to others and spent his time on science, as his friend Eugene Wigner
did, he too might have won the Nobel Prize. Like Oppenheimer, Szilard tried to
be both a scientist and a politician. Whatever can be said of Szilard's
politics, the time it took certainly reduced his effectiveness as a scientist.
Yet he left behind a legacy of institutions and a corpus of writings and ideas
which have changed the world.
FOR
FURTHER READING
Weart,
Spencer R. and Gertrude Weiss Szilard (Eds.): LEO SZILARD: HIS VERSION OF THE FACTS. Selected Recollections and
Correspondence. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1978.
Feld,
Bernard T. and Gertrude Weiss Szilard (Eds.): THE COLLECTED WORKS OF LEO SZILARD. SCIENTIFIC PAPERS. London and
Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1972.
Lanouette,
William: GENIUS IN THE SHADOW. A
Biography of Leo Szilard, The Man Behind the Bomb. Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1992.
(Wigner,
Eugene P.): THE RECOLLECTIONS OF EUGENE
P. WIGNER as told to Andrew Szanton. New York and London: Plenum Press,
1992.
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