If, God forbid, an atomic mushroom cloud should ever bloom in
the skies over South Valley, blame it on the fact Leo Szilard
stopped at a London traffic light the rainy morning of Sept. 12,
1933.
If, God forbid, an atomic mushroom cloud should ever bloom in the skies over South Valley, blame it on the fact Leo Szilard stopped at a London traffic light the rainy morning of Sept. 12, 1933.
“Who is Leo Szilard?” you ask. Well, meet the father of the atomic bomb.
Last Saturday marked the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. That event marked the first time in world history a city was devastated by a nuclear device. The second time, of course, happened three days later when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki.
In a sense, the road to Hiroshima and Nagasaki – and a potential atomic blast over Hollister, San Juan Bautista, Gilroy or Morgan Hill – began in the brain of Szilard when he stopped for the light at the London intersection of Southampton Row and Vernon Place back in 1933.
Born on Feb. 11, 1898, in Budapest, the Hungarian theoretical physicist was a colleague of Albert Einstein. The two, in fact, invented in 1931 a sophisticated electromagnetic pump used in refrigerators. (It was abandoned after Freon was invented.)
On March 31, 1933, Szilard fled Germany to escape Nazi persecution. Living in London, he happened on Sept. 12 of that year to read a London Times newspaper article quoting the famous scientist Ernest Rutherford.
“Anyone who looked for a source of power in the transformation of the atoms is talking moonshine,” Rutherford had said.
That off-handed remark sparked something in Szilard’s subconscious. While walking to a science conference at the Russell Hotel, he pondered the possibility of using atoms as a source of power. At a streetlight across from the British Museum where Southampton Row passes through Russell Square, Szilard had one of those “A-ha” moments that changed everything. His brilliant mind conceived the idea of a neutron chain reaction.
Szilard’s practical development of atomic energy wasn’t easy. The great Rutherford rejected his request for lab space at Cambridge University. Colleagues Niels Bohr and Enrico Fermi also at first refused to consider Szilard’s proposal that atomic power was feasible. They also disputed Szilard’s warning that if it was possible, it would be potentially dangerous and thus research would need to be controlled.
In 1938, Szilard move to New York City, and at Columbia University he predicted the radioactive element uranium might sustain a nuclear chain reaction. He also drafted the famous “Einstein letter” sent to President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Aug. 2, 1939, encouraging the development of an atomic bomb project before Nazi Germany might develop such a weapon of mass destruction. The notion must have sounded like science-fiction to the skeptical president
However, the next year, Szilard received $6,000 in research funds from the U.S. government. He began small-scale experiments using a uranium-carbon system of a sustained nuclear chain reaction.
Three years later as America entered the inferno of global war, the Hungarian scientist began to work at the University of Chicago in its “metallurgical laboratory.” There, under the university’s football stadium, development on the world’s first nuclear reactor began as part of the Manhattan Project run by U.S. Army General Leslie Groves.
Szilard soon realized the destructive power of the Manhattan Project. He grew increasingly fearful about the potential for a post-war nuclear arms race. He tried unsuccessfully to meet personally with Roosevelt – and later President Truman – to warn them of this danger.
The tyrannical Groves threatened to arrest Szilard and intern him for the duration of the war as a “detriment” to the project. Groves also forced him to sell his atomic energy patents to U.S. government.
In August 1945, Truman made the decision to drop two nuclear bombs on Japan. That same year, Manhattan Project scientists signed a petition opposing future use of such bombs on moral grounds.
Following World War II, Szilard quit physics research for the field of biology. He must have felt a certain guilt, I’m sure, his scientific discoveries caused the deaths of thousands of Japanese civilians. He actively opposed development of the hydrogen bomb, an even more powerful weapon of mass destruction than the uranium-fueled bomb he had developed.
On May 30, 1964, almost 20 years after Hiroshima, Szilard died in his sleep of a heart attack in La Jolla, Calif. The world changed dramatically forever because of the notion he had come up with on his rainy-day London stroll back in 1933.
In the news lately, we’re now learning that Iran and North Korea are developing potential nuclear weapons of their own. And now America is trapped in a costly and needless war because President Bush falsely told us Saddam Hussein developed nuclear weapons.
Szilard, the father of the atomic bomb, I’m sure would warn us to no longer “stay the course” on the road to Armageddon. We have a great potential to create a lasting peace if we can find the courage to change directions, he might say.
A few weeks ago, an “atomic flame” – fire kindled from the embers of Hiroshima and kept burning for the last 60 years – made its way through the South Valley. A red lantern holding this flame was carried by a group from the Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhist Order of monks who made their way down Highway 25 to Hollister. They walked for “peace, compassion and acceptance.”
Perhaps that symbolic flame, ignited six decades ago by the chain reaction triggered inside the Hiroshima bomb, represents a bit of Leo Szilard. It represents the brilliance of his human mind to unlock the secrets of the universe and the energy stored in atoms.
But even more importantly, that flame carried by those Buddhist monks represents Szilard’s hope for humanity. It summons the promise that perhaps one day, people living in towns like Hollister, Gilroy, San Juan Bautista or Morgan Hill will no longer fear any possibility of atomic mushroom clouds blooming over their skies.
Next time you stop for a red traffic light, consider how Szilard changed our world – for better or worse.
