Talk:Leo Szilard

message: WikiProject Biography Assessment
Barely a B. It has a "Miscellany" section, that really needs to be merged into the main body, and only a couple citations.
The article may be improved by following the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article. -- Yamara 04:42, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Biography/Assessment#Class_parameter|Biography assessment rating]] comment 

message: Delete "Los Alamos" as Szilard worked only in Chicago's Met Lab during the Manhattan Project. General Groves, the project's military director, distrusted and disliked Szilard and saw to it that Szilard stayed in Chicago for the duration of the war. William Lanouette, author of "Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, the Man Behind the Bomb." (Scribners 1992, University of Chicago Press 1994) lanouettew@gao.gov User:161.203.16.1
: Please feel free to edit the article if you can improve it. -- Oliver P. 15:05, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)
replies: text:  It's true about Los Alamos, so I changed it.  Also corrected the end of the bio, since he was at Salk and not UCSD, in molecular biology (for 17 years). Dandrake 03:45, 19 Sep 2003 (UTC)

text: * reference pages? seems spurious reference, opinion not factual.   also ironic after Leo had started letter genesis for project  that Groves inherited. Army had no visionJuror1 (talk) 09:44, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Los Alamos connection disputed 

message: Didn't Szilard and Einstein patent a household refrigerator, later manufactured and marketed by Electrolux?
Yes, Einstein Refrigerator
The constant pressure refrigerator was patented with Einstein and is more properly known as the Einstein-Szilárd refrigerator:  Tachyon 21:51, 15 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Einstein, Refrigerator? 

message: It might be nice to have a phonetic spelling of his name, I keep wanting to say Slizard.
It is similar to the pronounciation of "sea lard".
:I thought it was Sih as in window sill - sih Lard - emphasis on second syllable.  --SafeLibraries 13:17, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronounciation 

message: I failed the attempted 0.5 nom on Leó Szilárd because there are no refs. Thanks Jaranda wat's sup 02:55, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Failed 0.5 nom 

message: The infobox has been removed. Please discuss for & against to reach a consensus. To remind you what it looked like, here is a sample:
bunix 12:49, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Why remove the box THEN talk about why it was removed on the Tolk page.  Would it not have been better to leave up the box THEN talk about why it should be removed on the Talk page?  --SafeLibraries 12:55, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Let me ask this.  Since I'm newish, I'd like to hear from you why it should be removed.  To me, the infobox gives a quick overview of the man and is useful for that reason.  But I don't know the possible arguments for and against to make an informed decision.  So please add why you feel it should stay removed, now that you have removed it.  Thanks. --SafeLibraries 13:08, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Infobox 

message: I have made two changes. Firstly I have completely removed the sections concerning the effects of the atomic bombings and the reasons for the decision to use the bombs. It is a highly contentious issue and is being debated at length on the WP page about the bombing (Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki). There is no point to having a stunted rehash of  that article here too, and any interested reader would do MUCH better to refer to the article - which, luckily, is already cited in the text itself. Secondly, I have changed the sentence "...protestations of Szilárd and many of the other top scientists in the project" to " ...protestations of Szilárd and other scientists" because I saw no citations to validate the statement "many top scientists at the (Manhattan) Project." If the original reading is to be retained it must have valid citations. In fact, even this weakened statement might still be an overstatement of the true situation; I will be interested to see the sources cited for it. Possibly it needs to be even further weakened if no sourcing is forthcoming Hi There 23:15, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree.  Documentation is important. --SafeLibraries 01:48, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Okay.  Let me chuck aside the fancy language.  Basically what I am saying is this.  Had the Germans not decided to chuck away diversity and make everyone blond haired and blue eyed, Szilard might have choosen instead to do his work for the Germans.  After all, he was teaching physics at the University of Berlin.  He could have just stayed there.  His leaving, however, was forced on him.  If he did not leave, his contribution to Germany would have been as a lampshade.  So I'm saying that his choosing America might not have happened in the first place if he were not first forced out of Germany for fear of his life.  Mind you, I am not an expert in this area.  I am just making observations on the particular language used that makes it appear Szilard had free will and freely choose America.  Indeed he may have, but having been forced out of Germany first forced his hand at least somewhat.  Or maybe I'm being too picky.  But at least there should be some cite to it for support.  Who knows, maybe another wiki author, just as unfamiliar with the subject as myself, made the sentence initially.  --SafeLibraries 14:01, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I see your point but on the other hand, I would have to assume that physicists such as Szilard could have chosen other countries for a place of refuge and the US was not their only possible choice. As the article states, he initially went to London, and there is no reason to assume that he was forced to leave London at some later date and was only able to go to the US. Also, once having gotten to the US, there is no reason to assume that he was compelled to participate in the bomb project. That is how I understand the phrase under discussion - he thought that the US government was humane and therefore he helped the US develop the bomb even though he was not under any obligation to do so. Hi There 15:37, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I see.  Okay.  Citation might still be needed. --SafeLibraries 17:18, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Views on the use of nuclear weapons 

message: We also appear to have attracted anti-semitic vandalism of this site and (surprise surprise) just as it was featured on today's Wiki Main Page.
I was actually CITING this article on a forum when I spotted the sabotage. It made me look like a fool and Wikipedia once again was made to look unreliable and also insulting to Jews!!!???. I was totally incensed. ALL articles on the main page should be LOCKED or only allowed to be edited after peer revue. This situation stinks.--Phil Wardle 08:33, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Excellent.  Agree.  --SafeLibraries 19:38, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sabotage 

message: To me this reads more like a piece of journalism than a scholarly article, notably: "The entire history of the world could have been changed..." and "and the rest is history". I believe the tone, but not necessarily the meat, of this paragraph should be changed to reflect the scientific nature of the subject matter. 
Pretender 19:59, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  'Developing the idea of the nuclear chain reaction', paragraph 4 

message: The last section begins with two sentances:
"In 1947, Szilárd switched fields of study because of his horror of atomic weapons, moving from physics to molecular biology, working extensively with Aaron Novick. He proposed, in February of 1950, a new kind of nuclear weapon using cobalt as a tamper, a cobalt bomb, which he said might wipe out all life on the planet."
These sentences seem to contradict each other. On the one hand he abandoned physics because of the horror it had unleashed. Yet he comes up for the design for an even more horrific weapon. If both of these sentences are indeed true (they should be cited) there should be an explanation concerning these actions. Harley peters 20:11, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Later views on nuclear weapons 

message: Does anyone know whether Szilard read H. G. Wells's book The World Set Free or not? See The World Set Free. --Cbdorsett 08:36, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: According to The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Richard Rhodes, 1987) he did. I just read on page 24 in that book: "Just then, in 1932, Szilard found or took up for the first time that appealing orphan among H. G. Wells' books that he had failed to discover before: The World Set Free." Regards, --Dna-Dennis (talk) 05:22, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  The World Set Free (H.G. Wells) 

message: There are 3 reasons why to mention Leo Szilard Jewish origins in the third paragraph ( i.e  early life ):
1.Being a Jew, He escaped Europe and settle in the USA ,where he worked at Los Alamos.
2.Its written in the paragrph that:"...Szilárd's family had Jewish, German, Hungarian, and Slovak Cultural Influences , however, his father's primary language was German..." .One's can get confused and think that Szilard was of multiple ancestries.
3.having informative value.--Gilisa 17:11, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jewish origins 

message: Szilard family was from an Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry, that's mean that almost all of the chances were that they would have a German surname-that's is true for the vast majority of the Jewish people from all over Europe back then (and so is  for the Jewish people of the USA, Canada,Australia,South Africa, China and etc)-it have nothing to do with being German or even having German roots (Ashkenazi Jews are  descendants of  Jews that immigrate to Germany at the 10th  and then spread all over Europe).The same is true about Yiddish which was spoken by most of the Jews, from Romania to Germany, and was 90% made from German language. Even people like Steven Spielberg,Milton Friedman and many other famous Jews that had, in a sense, family german history and had German surname but didn't came out of Germany, at least not in a way that affect their own lifes . So, I find it only just to delete the note about Szilard surname (Jews changed there surname according to the place and culture when they were given with emancipation or even when they just start talking the language or from many other reasons) which have only a misleading value.--Gilisa 18:14, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see a value in censoring history in this manner. If they changed their surname, then it is encyclopedic to mention that fact.—RJH (talk) 16:12, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deleting the Spitz former surname of Szilard family for good reasons 

message: During the war his brother was working in the prison laboratory under Andrei Tupolev developing planes. Source: Leonid Kerber's memoirs. Will have a look around to fix the quote and edit to the effect. 212.188.108.216 (talk) 22:28, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Leo's brother 

message: Perhaps Szilard's work in biology deserves its own heading, as his career was devoted to biology after 1947. As it is now, details relating to this work are scattered throughout the article with no mention of the fact that he was appointed a professor of biology at the University of Chicago in 1948, running a lab with Aaron Novick. Also missing is mention of Szilard's assistance of Jacques Monod and Francois Jacob's work on gene regulation in e. coli for which they won the Nobel Prize in 1965. Inoculatedcities (talk) 17:39, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Szilard's contributions to biology 

message: I think that it might be a bit more fitting if we were to switch the section about the Manhantan project with the one directly after it that talks about his views on nuclear weaponry. It might make for a smoother and more orderly read. Soloman212 (And my pet tortoise.) (talk) 03:35, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure that would resolve the issue. It almost appears that they could be merged together to provide a better flow. Neither section is adequately developed at this point.—RJH (talk) 16:09, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Switching Around Two Sections 

message: Hi fellow wikipedians! I changed these sentences During 1932, Szilárd had read about the fictional "atomic bombs" described in H. G. Wells's science fiction novel The World Set Free. This inspired him to be the first scientist to examine seriously the science of the creation of nuclear weapons.
to
In 1932, Szilárd read the science fiction novel The World Set Free by H. G. Wells, a book which he said made a great impression on him. 
(And I referenced it). There are no clear accounts I know of how Szilárd was inspired by the book. These are the quite interesting parts in The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Richard Rhodes, 1987):
page 24:
"Just then, in 1932, Szilard found or took up for the first time that appealing orphan among H. G. Wells' books  that he had failed to discover before: The World Set Free."
page 24:
"Yet The World Set Free influenced Szilard less than its subject matter might suggest. "This book made a very great impression on me, but I didn't regard it as anything but fiction. It didn't start me thinking of whether or not such things could in fact happen. I had not been working in nuclear physics up to that time"."
page 266:
"After Bohr's arrival Szilard traveled down from New York to visit his sick friend and won a long-overdue surprise: "Wigner told me of Hahn's discovery. Hahn found that uranium breaks into
two parts when it absorbs a neutron.... When I heard this I immediately saw that these fragments, being heavier than corresponds to their charge, must emit neutrons, and if enough neutrons are emitted  ...  then it should be, of course, possible to sustain a chain reaction. All the things which H. G. Wells predicted appeared suddenly real to me.""
page 331: 
"Something other than Briggs' penurious methodology triggered a new burst of activity from Szilard. He had spent the winter preparing a thorough theoretical study, "Divergent chain reactions in systems composed of uranium and carbon" - divergent in this case meaning chain reactions that continue to multiply once begun (the document's first footnote, numbered zero, cited  "H. G. Wells, The World Set Free [1913]")."
Regards, --Dna-Dennis (talk) 05:49, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Szilárd and [[The World Set Free]], again 

message: ::"In February 1950 Szilárd proposed a cobalt bomb, a new kind of nuclear weapon using cobalt as a tamper, which he said might destroy all life on the planet. U.S. News & World Report featured an interview with Szilárd in its August 15, 1960 issue, "President Truman Didn't Understand." He argued that "violence would not have been necessary if we had been willing to negotiate.""
Wha...? There must be at least a couple sentences missing here. It's gone from encyclopedic to cryptic!  Shenme (talk) 02:49, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  After the war: incomprehensible non-sequitur 

message: — Preceding unsigned comment added by Legobot (talk • contribs) 00:20, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Good Article review 

message: I am confused by the language in this article.  It gives the clear impression that Leo Szilard was the original inventor of the idea of the nuclear chain reaction.  However, in 1944, the Nobel Foundation awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Otto Hahn "for his discovery of the fission of heavy nuclei".  The Nobel Foundation got part of the matter wrong because Lisa Meitner was a key part of the team, and should have shared the 1944 Prize with Hahn.  §Heavy nuclei are inherently neutron-rich so that even when a heavy nucleus splits and creates isotopes that are rich in neutrons, there is almost never a fission path available which can accommodate all of the neutrons into the fission products - i. e., there are almost always extra fast-moving neutrons left over to lead, upon their sufficient cooling, to further neutron-activation of heavy nuclei and a resultant chain reaction.  So did the Nobel Foundation get it totally wrong?  Or was the Hahn-Meitner team the first to discover just the fission of heavy nuclei without noticing the release of a surfeit of free neutrons?  Then Szilard came along later (1933? was it) to note that along with the fission of heavy nuclei, there was also the release of neutrons, setting in motion the possibility of a chair reaction? Please someone, research this issue and clear up the discrepancy. ColgatorBob (talk) 01:54, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Hahn discovered fission in November 1938, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Meitner and Frisch provided a theoretical explanation of fission, using Bohr's liquid drop model of the nucleus soon afterwards, in December 1938. Szilard had already propounded the nuclear chain reaction back in 1933, but had not been able to achieve one. He wasn't the only one to realize that fission could be used for a chain reaction. He knew it was not enough to just have neutrons released; with Enrico Fermi and Walter Zinn he determined that 1.73 were released on average. In order for a chain reaction to occur, they would need certain circumstances, such as a moderator, a reflector and/or compression. Hawkeye7 (talk) 02:13, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chain reaction 

message: Substituted at 21:49, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 3 external links on Leo Szilard. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20121029020707/http://www.mphpa.org/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=173 to http://www.mphpa.org/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=173
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20140413125139/http://www.embl.de/aboutus/general_information/history/ to http://www.embl.de/aboutus/general_information/history/
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130114082408/http://www.americanhumanist.org/AHA/Humanists_of_the_Year to http://www.americanhumanist.org/AHA/Humanists_of_the_Year
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Leo Szilard. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20151203081726/http://www.motleytech.net/en/2015/03/29/man-who-changed-war-and-peace/ to http://www.motleytech.net/en/2015/03/29/man-who-changed-war-and-peace/
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Under "Further Reading", the short-story collection "The Voice of the Dolphins" is listed, and a link given to an on-line copy at Stanford University (it's an archive.org copy of it).  But when you go there, it does not seem to be possible to access the full text.  Immediately available is only a limited preview of a few pages, most without significant content.  It seems full access requires membership - or if there is a way of finding the full text, it is certainly not easily apparent when you visit the page.
As a result, I am wondering whether the item should be removed from the "Further Reading" list.  What is the policy of Wikipedia about giving links like this to items which depend on membership of an organization, or are behind a pay-wall?  I had an idea (but am not sure) that the usual policy is to exclude such links.
The book is freely available at fadedpage.com, but it is not the expanded edition like the Stanford University one is.  I will add a link to that in a minute. M.J.E. (talk) 09:34, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: ... on second thoughts, perhaps I won't - a link is already there to the author page for Szilard on the Faded Page site. M.J.E. (talk) 09:36, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Further Reading" item should (probably) be removed. 

message: There is some ambiguity between reáliskola and  gymnasium. I entered Föreáliskola as the high school that Szilard attended, according to reference provided by Gene Dannen. The Wikipedia article Minta Gymnasium claims that both Szilard and Teller attend this school. An authority on Hungarian and schools in Hungary needs to speak out. Tachyon (talk) 13:18, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Early Life: high school