Dr. Leo Szilard, a Hungarian-born Jewish scientist reputed to be one of the greatest physicists of this century, died at his home here yesterday at the age of 66. Together with the late Dr. Enrico Fermi, Dr. Szilard created the first sustained nuclear chain reaction and was instrumental in the development of the first atomic bomb by this country.
Born in Budapest, Dr. Szilard served in the Austrian army during the First World War. He was among a noted group of Jewish scientists who left their native Hungary to pursue studies in Germany and who fled Germany ultimately for the United States when Hitler came to power. Others in this group included Dr. Edward Teller and Dr. Eugene P. Wigner, this year’s Nobel laureate in physics.
After teaching at the University of Berlin for 10 years, Dr. Szilard went to Vienna and then to London in 1933 and, after several years at Oxford, he emigrated to the United States in 1938 and joined the faculty of Columbia University. In 1939, along with Prof. Albert Einstein, he was instrumental in bringing to the attention of President Roosevelt the potential wartime uses of atomic energy by the Nazis and he was named together with Dr. Fermi to head the team that worked on the atomic bomb at Columbia University.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
