The life of physicist Leo Szilard, "The Genius Behind the Bomb" who became an activist against nuclear weapons. Included: archival footage. Also: comments from Edward Teller and Jonas Salk. Ed Asner narrates.
Oppeneimer was a great scientist and a good team leader in the Manhattan project. Lea Szilard was one of top 5 scientist in the Manhattan project and in the world at the time
There were two trips to visit with Einstein. Teller drove Szilard on the second trip because Wigner could not make it and Szilard did not know how to drive. Teller knew how to drive and he had a car.
Excellent programm. For many years I would daily walk over the road crossing in Southampton Row, Bloomsbury, London where Szilard suddenly thought of the atomic bomb chain reaction. Szilard was staying in the Russell Hotel, Russell Square as a refugee. He picked up a copy of the London Times,and read that Lord Ernest Rutherford had said in a lecture ,that Atoms would not provide energy. Annoyed he threw down the newspaper and left the hotel for a walk. The lights prevented him crossing...then they changed to red stopping the traffic. Before he got across to the garden's the other side he had had the brainwave of the atomic chain reaction.
One clarification: Leo did not make the graphite WITHOUT boron. He was given a very small amount of seed money first and he did the whole thing himself. He even traveled to the factory where he purchased the boron and interviewed them about the boron and then, just as he was getting up to leave, he suddenly thought to ask, "Is the boron PURE?" He was answered no, they mixed it with another chemical and sold it as a popular concrete floor cleaner. He instructed them, "Make this order PURE, with no additives at all." That is why he beat Heisenberg. The crucial step.
Boron is nothing but a contaminate in graphite to be used in an atomic pile. Graphite slows neutrons, allowing them to split U235. Boron is a very effective neutron absorber, making them unavailable to react. Fermi's early attempts to build a chain-reacting pile were largely because of the graphite impurities, particularly boron.
@@channelview8854 You are contradicting my memory of the story told in the "Genius In The Shadows". I at first wanted to ask you why Szilard would have traveled to the factory where the boron was produced and asked about its purity if it were "nothing but a contaminate" (I think you meant contaminant) in graphite? But, I think what might have happened is that Szilard used the PURE boron and even pure boron ended up also being a contaminant. The way I remembered it is that this moment of brilliance was what was the crucial step in beating Heisenberg to a critical pile. Heisenberg was using impure boron and that contaminated his pile. But, I see now that it may be that even pure boron was found to be a contaminant after initial attempts to use it. Thank you for the clarification.
@@rineric3214 see if you can pick up a copy of Richard Rhodes' encyclopedic "The Making of the Atomic Bomb". Rhodes won a Pullitzer Prize for it and from all I have read, it is the most authoritative on the subject. I understand there are some abridged editions on the market so I doubt you would want one. "Contaminate". . .forehead slap.
@@channelview8854 I hope you don't mind a windy answer. I have no interest in reading American propaganda again because I've heard it over and over for decades. I'm an amateur theoretical physicist who has his own theory of physics. I have read every biography of famous physicists that I could borrow. Probably all of the biographies on the market. As a result, I may have to insist that I was right actually. Reading the winner's tale is always depressing and invariably full of nationalist obfuscation. I repeat, from "Genius In The Shadows" (about the man who patented the atomic bomb as a military secret patent in 1931), that Leo traveled physically to the factory where he purchased boron. As he was leaving, he asked if the boron was pure and they answered no, it had another chemical added to it. He asked them to sell him just pure boron without any additive of any kind. Heisenberg used the impure boron and it contaminated the graphite so his pile never went critical.
I met Trude Weiss through a mutual friend while I was a physics grad student at UCSD around 1972 . We drove out to the Anza Borrego desert to see the spring cactus blooms. What a great day that was. One of my biggest regrets is that I didn't realize until later what an important man her husband was, and lost a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to ask her about him. The documentary was particularly interesting to me because it cleared up the Szilards' connection to La Jolla and the Salk Institute.
This is an unusually well crafted documentary. The interviews with Szilard, Teller, Bethe, Weisskopf and Wigner are, themselves, priceless. Ed Asher’s narration is impeccable. Though I have maintained an active interest in the subject matter of this piece for decades, I was unaware of its existence until now. Thank you so very much for posting. I will look forward to any other similar items you may post in the future.
Only had a “very fuzzy” grasp of the history of the atomic bomb’s development - then - having sat through 3 hours of a very well made and acted movie - “Oppenheimer” - I thought I was much better informed but then viewed this video - and now I realise that that movie - even with its depiction of a “team effort” - occludes - no doubt for reasons of dramatic licence rather than through any bad motive - the huge contribution Szilard
Movie wasn't about Manhattan project - it was biography of certain man and courtroom drama. They skipped Ulam, von Neumann, Feynmann was barely mentioned....
Nolan’s next film should be about Szilard and his differences with Oppenheimer and Groves … and the near misses re nuclear accidents … Szilard was right
No he was not. The 1st bomb on Hiroshima was necessary to avoid an American marine invasion of the home islands where at least 800,000 marines and 800,000 Japanese would have died. The 2nd bomb on Nagasaki could have waited another week to let the Japanese think about what they witnessed. Truman only waited 3 days.
Amazing & excellent video ! I wish people in general and world leaders in particular can learn the wisdom of Leo Szilard in contemporary times. Thank you and more success to your endeavors sirs & madame of this video channel.
The European scientists speak with such a heavy accent that too many words are lost. RU-vid CC makes a mess of their words. It's hard to understand why the producers of this documentary failed to load captions.
Before Szliard scientists thought an Atom Bomb was only as good as a low yield radiation bomb. With chain reaction Szliard realized just how devastating an atomic bomb could be.,
@@TheJmkovacs Not really. Most of the Hungarian physicists that worked on the atomic bomb were Jewish, and the all attended the same high school. Make of it what you wish.
@@kurtvonfricken6829 Yes, in Budapest. They were born at the turn of the 20th century when about 25% of the Budapest population was Jewish. A great Jewish community and culture existed in Hungary then. Only the German invasion in late 1944 brought about real persecution. The Jewish culture then as today, is intertwined with the Hungarian culture. As a matter of fact, many great artists, writers, poets, and scientists were Jewish, the same as today. The large majority consider themselves Hungarians, and this is what matters. We are not used to identity politics here, not yet. People like you will help to become one. Make of it what you wish.
One errror - Fermi and Szliard did not join the Manhatten project until 1944; I typed 1942 in error. Some very knowledgable people say Bohr wrote papers in 1939 with U235 identifed at the key isatope. Seems highly unlikely that this is a correct assessment certainly many would have understood the implications of isolating U235; supposedly no one did until 1942 when the Freish&Peierls paper is revealed to the Americans in 1942? Sounds like Friesh&Peierls were first; no one else.
Just know the theory is not enough to make the bomb, because the technology is so complicated! And Szilard solved the technical problems, so he became the designer of atomic bomb.
He needed Fermi's intense technical proficiency. To deal with something so dangerous, Fermi's careful meticulous personality was necessary to assuage American Federal nerves of a sustained nuclear reaction in a city with 10 million people.... underneath the bleachers of a football stadium..
The Genius behind the bomb ? Brilliant minds so often are filled with could we, not should we. Look at genetic engineering and AI. We have no idea of the damers we face with these things, and yet the minds that created them , never think " mmm maybe not"
Leo Szilard was NOT the first to understand the possibility of making a bomb of devastating power never ever seen before... That privilege is that of Lisa Meitner who was the first ever to understand that. She worked in the lab run by Otto Hahn. Otto Hahn got the Nobel for this while Lisa Meitner should have been granted that prize... but several decades later she got an element named after her, even more prestigious than the Nobel, namely Meitnerium ( Atomic Number 109 )
Wrong.szilard figured the theoratical framework of nuclear of fission in 1933 as he learned of rutherfords work before otto hahn discovered it along with meitner in 1938.he had the knowledge of fission before the discovery of fission by otto hahn.you can certainly see it when you dive deep into his biography.meitner helped otto hahn in the story but szilard discovered it earler.he just didnt have the experimental proof at that time until otto hahn did it in 1938.he made the nuclear bomb as manhattan scientistist using his own knowledge.if u ask me who was the most influencial person in nuclear technology after enrico fermi i will definitly say it was szilard
If you don't mind me asking, are you a practicing Vaishnava? I ask because we Shaivites view the Bhagavad Gita as a philosophical text belonging to the corpus of classical Sanskrit literature, but to Vaishnavites, it's literally the word of God.
"This monocotyledonous tree is native to the arid southwestern United States, specifically California, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada, and to northwestern Mexico. It is confined mostly to the Mojave Desert between 400 and 1,800 m elevation." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_brevifolia
@@qed100 Yes it does matter because some of us are actually geographically savvy. Another continual faux pas in documentary footage is showing a European train to illustrate an American train movement.
Sou fã da Ucrânia e graças a Deus ela perdeu para os Russos, zaporíjia e portanto quebrando dessa maneira, tornando assim ; a existir, impossibilidade de matança na Venezuela, Estado de Rondônia, Acre, e Santa Catarina evitando chantagem de uso dessas armas nucleares, caso alguém queira prender o assassino em série que é suspeito de matar navalny na Rússia. Mas claro gosto do zelensk e acredito que ele não faria isso em hipótese nenhuma.
Should we use the bomb on Japan? Well you can either ask a scientist who has nothing at stake but his/her sense of guilt, or you can ask a Marine who just lost most of his friends taking Iwo Jima a few square yards at a time. History tells us the Soviets knew about the bomb, would certainty develop their own device and would not give a fig what anyone else thought.
Between Hiroshima and Nagasaki over 100'000 people were killed, most instantly and thousands of others suffered the most unimaginable painful deaths that come with radiation poisoning. Of those killed nearly all were civilians, women and children. Untold damage was done to the local environment and nature. I'm glad Leo stuck his neck out and didn't blindly follow orders.
@@carrauntoohil86 Sadly, US estimates were 1 million US military deaths in an invasion of Japan and we can safely assume a few times that of Japanese both soldiers and civilians. So the bomb was kind.
@@alexcarter8807 I've heard this narrative and I understand there were no easy solutions, but dropping a weapon on such magnitude on predominantly civilians without knowing the consequences and long term effects was negligent at best.
@@alexcarter8807who cares Lmfao it was war… Soviet’s lost 25 million in their march to victory. USA just didn’t have the stomach for the fight so they condemned all of humanity to this creepy existence along with these weapons…
On one hand, I understand. On other - I think it was hyporcisy. Jews had every right to build bomb against Germans (hell, moral obligation!) but having second thoughts about using them against enemy of their protector, and at that - enemy that was concluding equally vile genocide, just against other people.....
I wish this potential was never discovered. The world at least there will not be much fear like today! Now how can these be sorted out?! There is fears everywhere now!
Richard Feynman was the most crucial physicist involved with the Manhattan project and without him we would’ve lost the race he developed away to do the math 3x faster than the way they were doing it at first without calculators they had to write everything all the math of the crazy advanced physics they were developing
sluggo3slug he actually was without Feynman the Germans would’ve definitely beat us in the race to weaponize a atom bomb in fact there’s actually evidence the Germans were the first to test a atom bomb and Feynman came up with a way to do these long ass math equations that was taking 9 months to complete 3 to completing 9 equations in 3 months cuz he was a math genius so yes without him we’d be speaking German
@@kurtvonfricken6829 that history tells you but there is concrete evidence of a nuclear bomb detonation in the German countryside with eye witness testimony watch Hunting Hitler season 1 or 2 maybe probably season 1
@@kurtvonfricken6829 I mean you can’t detonate a atom bomb without leaving a decades long zone of destruction like I said watch hunting Hitler it’s a fact German had to have tested a atom bomb around or before the same time America did but British commandos actually destroyed the heavy water plant that the Germans were using to develop their atomic bomb and never got a chance to make another but they most likely tested the first atom bomb
With any sunlight, Trump will repatriate you out of your GovJob and back to the merit-based private sector where you will have the opportunity to discover self-esteem and pride in your work.
I always thought that the dropping of the A- Bom would be justified because of the extreme hi body count, when the Americans invaded the main island. The formula is simple, you don't need to be a physicist , 1billion dollars (American Tax money) X ( save American soldiers ) = ending the war. Also Teller is saying that he agreed with Szilard not to drop the bom, but went on to develop the nuclear Hydrogen bom. Leave the politics to the politicians, the Army to the generals and physics to the physicist.
