A Hódmezővásárhelyi Szeremlei Társaság Évkönyve 2012 (Hódmezővásárhely, 2013)
EMLÉKEZÉS - TELLER Ede: History of the Martians - A marslakók története
THE STORY OF THE MARTIANS1 This is a story of five Hungarian scientist who made significant contributions in saving the world frim the dictatorships of Hitler and Stalin. During most of the 20th century, Hungary was dominated and suppressed by one or the other of two cruel totalitarian regimes: German Nazism and Russian communism. Four of my good friends have made significant contributions to the defeat of these two horrible regimes. With some immodesty, I shall join in the following list of my four friends. The careers of the five of us snow some remarkable similarities. All of us were born within two decades of each other in the fifth sub-section (Kerület) of Budapest. All of us left Hungary in the early decades of the 20th century, became experts while residing in Germany, and then, with Hitler's advent, left for the United States. The first was Theodore von Karman. He consulted with the American Army Air Corp even before the separate existence of an American Air Force. He formulated an ambitious plan for the greatest Air Force ever. When Roosevelt ordered the building of this Air Force at the entry of the United States into the Second World War, the plans met with a widespread incredulity. Most fortunately, this skepticism turned out to be completely unjustified. Von Karman foresaw what was needed and, even more incredibly, the plan was accepted. The second of the group was Leo Szilard who managed to ottend practically everyone by insisting on his own superior knowledge on every topic. However, he had never been accused of being boring. He was the first to advocate research on and the practical use of nuclear weapons. Indeed, he wrote the letter to President Roosevelt that Einstein signed. Roosevelt accepted and acted upon it. Eugene Paul Wigner was prominent in quantum mechanics, and, indeed, he was the chief author of the theory of the atomic nucleus. For years, he was deeply involved with the development of nuclear reactors, the means to utilize the tremendous concentration of energy in a nucleus for peaceful purposes. His great politeness was in remarkable contrast to the approach of Szilard. I myself, have been deeply involved in nuclear explosives and managed to contribute to the winning of the Cold War with no cost to human life. John von Neumann was a mathematician who loved the functions of his brain at least as much as others loved sex. He invented the modern computer which, instead of merely performing some of the functions of our brain, aims at performing all of them. The remarkable fact is that apart from their use in science (in which John von Neumann amply participated), his computers have made their way into government, banking and even small households. Computers, indeed, present challenges to human intelligence to which more and more people are responding. The remarkable fact is that each one of us took a different approach in spite of which (and I claim because of which) we understood each other very well. The one thing in common to all: we tried to accommodate what was 1 Az alábbi üzenetet Teller Ede küldte a Magya Lobbynak 2000. november 29-én. Közzéteszi Kovács László, magyarra fordította Samu János. 285
