The Martians

As The Martians ( English for 'the Martians') a group of prominent and highly talented physicists and mathematicians was referred to in the first half of the 20th century . All Martians came from the upper Jewish bourgeoisie in Budapest , had received a substantial part of their academic training at German-speaking universities and had immigrated to the USA with the rise of National Socialism . The Martians included: Leó Szilárd , Eugene Paul Wigner , Edward Teller , John von Neumann and occasionally Theodore von Kármán , although the latter was noticeably older than the other people. In a broader sense, Dennis Gábor , Paul Erdős and John G. Kemeny were also included more rarely .

Conceptualization

The humorously ironic term was coined in conversations in Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project , where the question was asked why so many of the talented scientists working there came from Hungary . One participant replied that they were originally Martians who only spoke Hungarian for camouflage. The members of this group had amazing parallels in their lives. They were all born in Budapest, came from Jewish families with a German cultural background, had studied and / or worked at German-speaking universities and had emigrated to America with the rise of National Socialism .

For the Americans, the Martians were extraordinarily exotic appearances from distant Europe. Most of our American colleagues only knew Hungary by hearsay and had only a rough idea of ​​Budapest. It seemed difficult to explain to them that such a large number of highly gifted, intellectually outstanding scientists had sprung from one place in such a short time. That is why it was jokingly mentioned that members of a superior extraterrestrial civilization from the planet Mars had set up their earthly headquarters in Hungary.

John von Neumann explained the statistically improbable accumulation of so many outstanding scientists from Budapest at the beginning of the 20th century to Stanisław Ulam that this was a constellation of certain cultural factors that he could not specify: an external pressure on the whole society of this part of Central Europe, an unconscious one Feeling of extreme insecurity in the individual, and the need to create the extraordinary or to perish . He referred to the history of Hungary after the First World War, first with the communist regime of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, in which many previously well-off people lost their offices, followed by the authoritarian anti-Semitic regime of Miklós Horthy , before which Jewish students in particular fled abroad Germany was particularly attractive for scientists and mathematicians at the time.

Synoptic overview of the lives of the Martians

The following table gives a comparative overview of the lives of the five Martians in the narrower sense.

Synoptic overview of the "Martians"

person	Date of birth	Education and scientific. Activity in Europe	emigration	Activity in the USA	date of death
Leó Szilárd	Feb. 11, 1898 (Budapest)	1908–16 secondary school in Budapest 1916/17, 1918–19 Budapest University of Technology 1920 Technical University Berlin-Charlottenburg 1920–22 Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin 1922 Promotion ( About the thermodynamic fluctuation phenomena ) at Max von Laue 1923–1927 research assistant at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Fiber Chemistry under Hermann F. Mark 1927 Privatdozent at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin (habilitation thesis: On the entropy reduction in a thermodynamic system during interventions by intelligent beings ) Since 1922 collaboration with Albert Einstein March 30, 1933 Szilárd leaves Germany via Vienna for England from 1933 development of theoretical concepts for nuclear energy generation, patent application 1934–37 experimental work at St. Bartholomew's Hospital London together with Thomas A. Chalmers	1920 to Germany 1933 to England 1937 to the USA	August 2, 1939 Albert Einstein writes a letter, essentially Szilárd formulated, to President Roosevelt , in which an American nuclear weapons project is suggested from 1942 head of the Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago as part of the Manhattan Project from 1946 professor at the University of Chicago from 1957 engagement in the Pugwash conferences 1964 Salk Institute , La Jolla, California	May 30, 1964 (La Jolla, California)
Eugene Wigner (1963)	Nov 17, 1902 (Budapest)	1915–19 Fasori Evangélikus Gimnázium Budapest 1920–21 Budapest University of Technology 1921-25 Technical University of Berlin-Charlottenburg since 1922 work at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin-Dahlem under Hermann F. Mark 1924 (?) Diploma thesis (....) with Hermann F. Mark 1925 dissertation ( formation and decay of molecules, statistical mechanics and reaction speed) for Dr. Ing. With Michael Polanyi 1925–26 worked as an engineer in Budapest 1926–27 research assistant initially with Karl Weissenberg , then Richard Becker at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin 1927 assistant to David Hilbert at the University of Göttingen 1928–30 in Berlin	1921 to Germany 1930/33 to the USA	1930–33 visiting professor at Princeton University 1933–36 visiting professor at Princeton University 1936–38 professor at the University of Wisconsin 1938–71 professor at Princeton University 1942–45 participation in the Manhattan Project (University of Chicago) 1946–47 director of Clinton Laboratories in Oak Ridge, Tennessee 1952–57 member of the General Advisory Committee of the US Atomic Energy Commission 1963 Nobel Prize in Physics	Jan 1, 1995 (Princeton, New Jersey)
Edward Teller (1958)	Jan 15, 1908 (Budapest)	1917-25 Minta grammar school in Budapest 1926 Budapest University of Technology 1926–28 Technical University of Karlsruhe 1928 University of Munich 1928–30 University of Leipzig 1930 Dissertation ( About the Wasserstoffmolekülion ) at Werner Heisenberg (Leipzig) 1930–33 research assistant at the University of Göttingen with Arnold Eucken and James Franck 1933–34 London and Copenhagen	1926 to Germany 1933 to England 1935 to the USA	1935–46 George Washington University , Washington, DC 1942–46 collaboration on the Manhattan Project (1942–43 Chicago, 1943–46 Los Alamos) 1946-52 University of Chicago 1949–52 worked in Los Alamos 1954 Hearing before the Committee on Un-American Activities 1952–2003 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , California 1953-75 University of California	Sept 9, 2003 (Stanford, California)
John von Neumann (around 1940)	December 28, 1903 (Budapest)	1910 (?) - 21 Fasori Evangélikus Gimnázium Budapest 1921 University of Budapest 1921–23 Technical University of Berlin-Charlottenburg 1923-25 ETH Zurich (chemical engineering) 1926 Dissertation (....) University of Budapest 1927–29 private lecturer at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin 1929 private lecturer at the University of Hamburg	1921 to Germany (1923–26 Switzerland) 1930/33 to the USA 0000	1930–33 Princeton University as visiting professor 1933-57 Institute for Advanced Study , Princeton 1943–55 worked in Los Alamos	Feb 8, 1957 (Washington, DC)
Theodore von Kármán (1950)	May 11, 1881 (Budapest)	1891–99 Minta grammar school in Budapest 1899–1903 studied at the Technical University of Budapest 1903–06 assistant to Donát Bánki in Budapest 1906-08 assistant to Ludwig Prandtl in Göttingen, doctorate ( buckling strength of rods ) 1910 Habilitation in Göttingen ( investigations into the conditions of fracture and plastic deformation, especially with quasi-isotropic bodies ) 1912 worked at the Bergakademie Schemnitz 1913-30 / 33 professorship at the Technical University of Aachen 1914-18 during the war head of the Austro-Hungarian research group for aviation 1918–19 worked in the Ministry of Education of the Hungarian Soviet Republic	1906/13 to Germany 1930/33 to the USA	1930–49 head of the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology 1933 Founder of the US Institute of Aeronautical Sciences (later Jet Propulsion Laboratory )	May 6, 1961 (Aachen)

literature

• István Hargittai : The Martians of Science. Five Physicists Who Changed the Twentieth Century. Oxford University Press, Oxford et al. 2006, ISBN 0-19-517845-9 .
• George Marx The voice of the Martians. 2nd edition. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest 1997, ISBN 963-05-7427-6 .

Web links

• George Marx, The Martians vision of the future

Individual evidence

1. ↑ So in Hargittai's book: The Martians of Science. 2006, p. VII.
2. ↑ Hargittai: The Martians of Science. 2006, p. VII.
3. ↑ S. Ulam: John von Neumann 1903–1957. In: Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. Vol. 64, 1958, pp. 1-49, ( online ).
4. ↑ Most of the biographical details are taken from the extensive monograph by Istvan Hargittai.