By Balazs Hargittai and Istvan Hargittai
World Scientific
The “Martians” of science that the titles refers to are five Jewish-Hungarian scientists who distinguished themselves for significant discoveries in fundamental science that contributed to shaping the modern world. These great scientists are John von Neumann, a pioneer of the modern computer; Theodore von Kármán, known as the scientist behind the US Air Force; Loe Szilard, initiator of the development of nuclear weapons; Nobel laurate Eugene P Wigner, who was the world’s first nuclear engineer; and Edward Teller, colloquially known as “the father of the hydrogen bomb”.
Born to upper-middle-class Jewish families and raised in the sophisticated atmosphere of liberal Budapest, they were forced to leave their anti-Semitic homeland to emigrate to Germany, and ultimately to the US, which became their new home country, to the point that they devoted themselves to its defence.
The book comes as a follow-up to a previous title, The Martians of Science, which drew the profiles of these five scientists and presented their contributions to their fields of research. The aim of this second volume is to show the wisdom of the Martians by presenting their thoughts and ideas with their own words and putting them into context. Through direct quotes from the five characters and commentaries from other people who knew them, the authors offer an insight into the thinking of such great minds, which they find instructive and entertaining. They are witty, provocative, intriguing and, as the author says, never boring.
