Technikatörténeti szemle 19. (1992)

KÖNYVISMERTETÉS - Papers of the First „MINERALKONTOR” International Conference on the History of Chemistry and Chemical Industry (Veszprém, 12-16 August, 1991)

mediate in an unpleasant situation as both men were his bosses. It was a small world at that time. It is difficult to tell how and when did Pfeiffer got in contact with Polanyi. There were different possibilities. First, Pfeiffer new Tangl very well, and the latter could speak about the extremely gifted student of medicine who needed a first class training in physical chemistry. Second, Pfeiffer suffered a lot from political persecutions. After the First World War, two revolutions broke out in Hungary, and Pfeiffer took active part in the second, the communist one (12). Though Polanyi has never been a revolutionist, never been a communist not even a leftist, but he was member of a radical intellectual student organization, called Galilei Circle. The secretary of this Circle was his brother, the excellent economist, Karl Polanyi and practically all the significant young intellectuals of the time were members, including e. g. Leo Szilard, George Polya, the famous mathematician later in Stanford. Pfeiffer attended the meetings which were extremely stimulative and nonconformist. The professor of the Technical University, member of the Free Maison Movement was open minded enough to listen to the younger generation. They could obviously meet there. Of course, these are only conjectures. It might have happened otherwise. Hungarian middle class intellectuals formed an even smaller circle than the chemists international community. During the first of the two revolutions, the democratic one, Polanyi won high rank in the ministry of health. He became state secretary, worked out a conception for reorganization of Hungarian health system, and hesitated to give up his scientific ambitions for the political career. When the communists came to power, he did not hesitate any longer, gave up his position and went to teach at Hevesy's department. Pfeiffer, however, undertook an important position during the second, the communist revolution. He became head of a section, and was in charge of chemistry. Both men had a change in his career after the revolutions. The new rightist regime forced Pfeiffer to retire from his university department. He was offered to be head of the newly established private research laboratory of the United Lamp factory. In fact, he was the person who organized the lab which became extremely successful in developing the krypton bulb as well as in some basic research of experimental Physics (13). Polanyi was fired from the university because of his Jewish origin and democratic views, as it can be concluded from a letter Hevesy wrote to Niels Bohr. He did not mention Polanyi by name but said that his two excellent assistants were ousted for the above mentioned reasons. Hevesy lost not only his professorship but also his right to give lectures at the university where he had been ..privatdozent" since 1913. He left Hungary for Koppenhagen and received a position from Bohr in his newly established institute, which soon became the famous Koppenhagen school of quantum physics. A potentially wonderful scientific center was dissolved by the narrow-minded right wing politics (14). Pfeiffer, however, was aware of Polanyi's values and employed him as consultant living abroad. It became a long lasting relationship, quite advantageous also to Polanyi who did not have a big salary in Germany either. This relationship stayed alive after Pfeiffer's retirement, during Polanyi's Manchester period.