The Emigre Scientists

Rubik's Cube & Hungarian Inventors

Course 1 · Chapter 8 · The Emigre Scientists

A large part of the story of Hungarian science happened outside Hungary. Between the First World War and the Second, a group of Hungarian-born scientists, many of them Jewish, left for Germany, Britain and above all the United States, where they did work that shaped the century. This chapter describes why they left, introduces four of them, and looks at how their story, including the nuclear weapons programmes, is told. The nuclear and military questions are debated, and the course describes the facts and the disputes without taking a side. Names, dates and details are from general knowledge and flagged for checking.

Why They Left

There was no single cause. Several pressures acted together (check each, and see Hungarian history courses for the wider context):

  • 1919 and after. The revolutions of 1919 and the violent reaction that followed (the "White Terror") drove some intellectuals to leave (check the events and the scale).
  • The 1920 law. A law limiting university admission by group, the numerus clausus, was aimed in practice at Jewish students, and pushed some to study abroad, especially in Germany (check the law and its effects).
  • The 1930s. The rise of the Nazi regime in Germany, where several had settled, forced them out again, and many moved on to Britain and the United States (check).
  • Opportunity. Universities and laboratories abroad offered posts, resources and colleagues that were hard to find at home.

Four Scientists

Leo Szilárd

Physicist, born in Budapest in 1898 (check). In 1933 he conceived the idea of a nuclear chain reaction (check), helped to bring the Einstein letter of 1939 to President Roosevelt (check), and worked on the first nuclear reactor in Chicago. Later he opposed the use of the bomb and campaigned for arms control (check).

Edward Teller

Physicist, born in Budapest in 1908 (check). He worked on the Manhattan Project and became the best-known advocate of the hydrogen bomb. His testimony at the 1954 security hearing of J. Robert Oppenheimer divided colleagues (check). His reputation remains disputed.

Eugene Wigner

Physicist, born in Budapest in 1902 (check). He worked on the first reactors and on the theory of atomic structure, and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 (Chapter 7, check).

Theodore von Kármán

Engineer and aerodynamicist, born in Budapest in 1881 (check). He worked in Germany and then in California, where he helped to found the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (check), and advised on military aviation.

Others in the same circle include John von Neumann (Chapter 6) and Dennis Gábor (Chapter 5). Several attended the same Budapest schools (check, and see Chapter 1 on the explanations offered).

The Manhattan Project

Several of these men worked on the wartime effort to build a nuclear weapon (check the roles of each). Szilárd pressed for the project in 1939 out of fear that Germany would build the bomb first. Later, before the weapon was used on Japan in 1945, Szilárd and others signed petitions asking that it be demonstrated first or not used without warning (check the petition and its history). Their views after the war varied: some campaigned for arms control, others for a stronger deterrent.

A debate, not a verdict Historians and the scientists themselves disagreed on whether the weapons should have been built and used, and about the part individuals played. The course records that debate. It does not say who was right, and it avoids simple labels such as hero or villain.

How Their Story Is Told

  • The Martians. The joke from Chapter 1 appears in many popular accounts, and is itself part of the story (check its origin).
  • In Hungary. After 1945, and particularly in the communist period, the emigres were treated with ambivalence, as national heroes in some accounts and as people who left in others (check how this changed and when).
  • Abroad. In the United States and Britain they are often described by their later nationality, so that a Hungarian-born scientist becomes an "American physicist" (check).
  • Memory. Recent decades have seen exhibitions, books and plaques in Budapest recalling them (check the examples; see Chapter 9).
A British comparison Britain also received refugee scientists in the 1930s (the Kindertransport is the best-known child refugee scheme, and the Academic Assistance Council helped scholars, check), and also lost scientists to the United States later (the so-called brain drain, check). Dennis Gábor's British career is an example of the first (Chapter 5).
Check the details Dates, the history of the 1920 law, roles in the Manhattan Project, the Oppenheimer hearing, petitions and post-war views are easy to misstate and politically sensitive. Verify against reliable histories before quoting.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Give three reasons why Hungarian-born scientists left Hungary in the early twentieth century.

→ Solution
Exercise 2

Compare Szilárd and Teller: what did they have in common, and how did their later views differ?

→ Solution
Exercise 3

Explain why the course describes the nuclear debate without choosing a side, and how you would write a fair paragraph on it.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

  • Reasons: 1919 upheaval, the 1920 law, the 1930s, opportunity abroad (check)
  • Szilárd: chain reaction idea, later arms control (check)
  • Teller: hydrogen bomb, Oppenheimer hearing (check)
  • Wigner: reactors, Nobel 1963 (check)
  • Von Kármán: aerodynamics, JPL (check)
  • Stance: describe the debate, no verdict