Meet Leo Szilard

On September 12, 1933, Leó Szilárd, waiting for a red light on Southampton Row in Bloomsbury, conceived of the idea of the nuclear chain reaction.

As a sidelight, here's a little something about a book link to Szilard:

The World Set Free by H.G. Wells, in which the remarkably prescient Mr. Wells predicts the development of atomic bombs in 1933. By coincidence, Leo Szilard read the book in 1932, thought up the science behind nuclear fission in 1933, and received a patent for it in 1934. The book also predicts that eventually atomic bombs could be carried in a bag "with the power to wreck half a city".

This is remarkable stuff for a book written in 1914!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Set_Free

More about Szilard and the famous Einsteinr letter to FDR in 1939. In it they asked FDR to step up a program to develop atomic bombs before the Nazis succeeded in their own experiments.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein-Szil%C3%A1rd_letter

http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Begin/Einstein.shtml


They were apparently not aware of a similar program underway in Japan. Can you imagine if either of these warrior contries had developed the capability first? Which American city would have been the first to feel the wrath? Do you really believe that either Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan would have hesitated to use such a weapon?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_atomic_program