Leó Szilárd Biography

Leo Szilard was a renowned inventor who was involved with the Manhattan Project responsible for development of the first ever nuclear reactor. Szilard was born to a Jewish Civil engineer and took after his father when he enrolled at the Palatine Joseph Technical University. But with the ensuing war, he was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian military. Ill-health however prevented him from being deported to the battle front. He then resumed his studies at the technical university but his Jewish roots proved to be a hindrance in his path and he moved to the University of Berlin where he studied physics under the expert guidance of greats such as Albert Einstein and Max Planck. In the course of time he spent in Berlin, Leo was involved in several inventions which included the cyclotron and electron microscope. Since he never documented any of these inventions, others were credited for building them. As the rising Nazi-oppression made it difficult for scientists to pursue research of their free will, he fled to London, where he began working at the St Bartholomew's Hospital. It was here that he discovered a technique to separate isotopes from the compounds, which was named as the Szilard–Chalmers effect, after its discoverers. Later he was involved with the Manhattan project which designed the nuclear reactor. Read on to know more about his life and works.