Word: szilard
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Alerted by the emigre Hungarian scientist Leo Szilard to the possibility that the Germans might build an atom bomb, he wrote F.D.R. of the danger, even though he knew little about recent developments in nuclear physics. When Szilard told Einstein about chain reactions, he was astonished: "I never thought about that at all," he said. Later, when he learned of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he uttered a pained sigh...
...Europe, the Anglo-American atom bomb program sparked by the discovery of fission late in 1938 would have found itself shorthanded. Most Allied physicists had already been put to work developing radar and the proximity fuse, inventions of more immediate value. Fermi and his fellow emigres--Hungarians Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, John von Neumann and Edward Teller, German Hans Bethe--formed the heart of the bomb squad. In 1939, still officially enemy aliens, Fermi and Szilard co-invented the nuclear reactor at Columbia University, sketching out a three-dimensional lattice of uranium slugs dropped into holes in black, greasy blocks...
...Moscow the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service -- a successor to the agency that Beria once headed and Sudoplatov worked for -- put out a rare public disclaimer. Sudoplatov's "allegations ((about)) Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard, Robert Oppenheimer," it said, "do not correspond to reality." Oleg Tsarev of the same agency, an in-house expert on atomic spying, says, "Having seen the summary file ((on nuclear espionage)), I can tell you there are no such names as Sudoplatov mentions in it." He makes one tiny exception: "One of our sources had a discussion with someone who knew Oppenheimer in 1945." But the report...
...taped interview, Sudoplatov asserts (more flatly than in the book) that "in 1944 we received from Szilard material about his work at Los Alamos. This was very important." But Szilard did not work at Los Alamos in 1944 -- or ever...
Four weeks ago, we printed an excerpt from Special Tasks, the memoir of a Soviet spymaster published by Little, Brown. In it the principal author, Pavel Sudoplatov, charged that prominent scientists, including J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard, had knowingly made atomic secrets available to Soviet agents. Since publication of the book, many nuclear physicists and historians have raised serious questions about Sudoplatov's account. Our story on the controversy begins on page...