Genius and Conscience of Leo Szilard

Those with a serious interest in U.S. science policy and its dynamics know the importance of reading the lives of the atomic scientists—that group of mainly physicists who created and developed the atomic bomb and remained as advisers to the government in the development and use of atomic energy. These same men went on to form the institutional bedrock of scientific and technological advice to government. It was their development of the A-bomb that propelled science to a more blazing and legendary visibility in public affairs. These legends include J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Eugene Wigner, Edward U. Condon, Harold Urey, Glenn T. Seaborg, Hans Bethe, Victor Weisskopf, Arthur H. Compton, Ernest O. Lawrence, John Von Neumann ... and Leo Szilard. William Lanouette, a long-time science journalist and currently an energy analyst with the General Accounting Office, has done an important service to the field—with the help of Szilard's brother, Bela Silard—by ...