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Bizarre and ultimately bad essay. The author seems to want to convince us that she knows more about Szilard than she will ever tell. She calls Szilard "Leo" whi
by beefman 8y ago
Bizarre and ultimately bad essay. The author seems to want to convince us that she knows more about Szilard than she will ever tell. She calls Szilard "Leo" while referring to everyone else by surname. She's dismissive of Szilard and his legacy without ever giving evidence the man was less than a genius. She twice mentions Szilard's insistence on designing his own radiotherapy, but fails to mention that this saved not only his own life, but became standard and saved countless lives subsequently (including that of my maternal grandfather).
- nolta 8y agoOther errors of omission include: * "When The Voice of the Dolphins was published, Leo hadn’t worked in physics in over a decade" fails to mention he switched to biology. * "His first real permanent address in America was in La Jolla, where he retired" fails to mention he helped setup the Salk Institute (in La Jolla) and was a fellow there.
- keithpeter 8y agoPerhaps worth mentioning that Paul Erdős had a somewhat vagabondish lifestyle as well - I suspect refugee experience. Back in the early 80s, Rudolf Peierls did a talk to about a hundred of us at Birmingham University about the war, quantum mechanics and Heisenberg. It must have seemed desperate in 1940 in the dark days with worries about family &c.
- pvitz 8y agoEdit: Confused Ulam and Szilard
- oldmartian 8y agoSzilard never had brain surgery.
- pvg 8y agoI think you're confusing Ulam with Szilard. I'm not sure Szilard even comes up in Indiscrete Thoughts
- theoh 8y agoWith Erdős I wonder if there was a bit of this involved http://induecourse.ca/absent-mindedness-as-dominance-behaviour/ http://induecourse.ca/absent-mindedness-as-dominance-behavio... I've never heard his eccentricity attributed to wartime trauma (obviously I'll always be open to new information on that...)