July 3, 2007

| This Working Library >>

Tell me this has never happened to you waiting for a red light:

Like me, you probably don’t associate the traffic lights on Southampton Row with the end of the world. But it was while waiting there in 1933 that the Hungarian polymath Leo Szilard conceived the idea of a nuclear chain reaction, and thus the creation of the atomic bomb.

In the Telegraph, Tibor Fischer continues:

The car contains Szilard and his de facto chauffeur, Wigner (only Szilard would use a future Nobel Laureate as his taxi service). They are trying to find Albert Einstein to convince him of the need to urge the US government to start building an atomic bomb before the Nazis do.

When they finally locate Einstein and outline how chain reactions can be achieved, Einstein comments: “Daran habe ich gar nicht gedacht” (I hadn