![]() ![]() Szilard’s eureka moment was based on this groundbreaking experiment. They broke a lithium nucleus in two by bombarding it with protons, verifying Albert Einstein’s insight that mass and energy were one and the same, as expressed by the equation E = mc2. James Chadwick had just discovered the neutron and Cambridge physicists soon “split the atom”. He arrived in a country that was then at the forefront of nuclear physics. Szilard himself was a Hungarian-born Jew who had fled Germany for the UK two months after Adolf Hitler became chancellor. It features an extraordinary cast of characters, many of them refugees from Fascism who were morally opposed to the bomb but driven by the dreadful prospect of Nazi Germany getting there first. The path from Szilard’s idea to its deadly realisation is one of the most remarkable chapters in the history of science and technology. ![]() A little under 12 years later, the US dropped an atom bomb on Hiroshima, killing an estimated 135,000 people. ![]() Leo Szilard was waiting to cross the road near Russell Square in London when the idea came to him. ![]()
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