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MEK fejléc (Bibliographic data, in Hungarian)
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THE MARTIANS' VISION OF THE FUTURE
George Marx
Department of Atomic Physics, Eötvös University, Budapest
It is well known that it was the U.S., and soon thereafter the Soviet Union,
England, France, and China, where nuclear power was accomplished. In
addition, a number of highly talented physicists of other nations
contributed to the success, e.g. Germans (Hans Bethe, Felix Bloch, Otto
Hahn, Rudolf Peierls), Austrians (Otto Robert Frisch, Hans Halban, Lise
Meitner, Victor Weisskopf), Italians (Eduardo Amaldi, Enrico Fermi, Bruno
Pontecorvo, Emilio Segré). Teller used to emphasize: - It was the work of
many people. - Why are just Hungarian scientists considered to be, in some
sense, "aliens"?1
The birth of a legend
- Enrico Fermi was a man with outstanding talents, he had many interests
outside his own particular field. He was credited with asking famous
questions. There are long preambles to Fermi's questions like this:
- The universe is vast, containing myriads of stars, many of them not unlike
our Sun. Many of these stars are likely to have planets circling around
them. A fair fraction of these planets will have liquid water on their
surface and a gaseous atmosphere. The energy pouring down from a star will
cause the synthesis of organic compounds, turning the ocean into a thin,
warm soup. These chemicals will join each other to produce a
self-reproducing system. The simplest living things will multiply, evolve by
natural selection and become more complicated till eventually active,
thinking creatures will emerge. Civilization, science, and technology will
follow. Then, yearning for fresh worlds, they will travel to neighboring
planets, and later to planets of nearby stars. Eventually they should spread
out all over the Galaxy. These highly exceptional and talented people could
hardly overlook such a beautiful place as our Earth. - "And so, " - Fermi
came to his overwhelming question, - "if all this has been happening, they
should have arrived here by now, so where are they ? " - It was Leo Szilard,
a man with an impish sense of humor, who supplied the perfect reply to
Fermi's rethoric: - "They are among us," - he said, - "but they call
themselves Hungarians. "
This is Francis Crick's version of the myth.2 - A saying circulated among us
that two intelligent species live on Earth: Humans and Hungarians - as Isaac
Asimov recalled. Hans Bethe wondered quite "seriously" whether a brain like
von Neumann's does not indicate a species superior to that of man.3 -
Richard Rhodes4 has reported: - At Princeton a saying gained currency that
Neumann, the youngest member of the new Institute for Advanced Studies,
twenty-nine in 1933, was indeed a demigod but that he had made a thorough,
detailed study of human beings and could imitate them perfectly. - The myth
of the Martian origin of the Hungarian scientists who entered world history
on American soil during World War II probably originated in Los Alamos. Leon
Lederman, director of the Fermilab, reported possible hidden intentions5: -
The production of scientists and mathematicians in the early 20th century
was so prolific that many otherwise calm observers believe Budapest was
settled by Martians in a plan to infiltrate and take over the planet Earth.
- (See Kovács' map in this volume, p.45.) As a matter of fact, these
suspicious Hungarians - Theodore von Kármán, John von Neumann, Leo Szilard -
enjoyed the myth. Edward Teller became especially happy of his E.T.
initials, but he complained about indiscretion, - Von Kármán must have been
talking. Yankee magazine [March 1980] reported this landing in detail:
- Gabor, von Kármán, Kemeny, von Neumann, Szilard, Teller, and Wigner were
born in the same quarter of Budapest. No wonder the scientists in Los Alamos
accepted the idea that well over one thousand years ago a Martian spaceship
crashlanded somewhere in the center of Europe. There are three firm proofs
of the extraterrestrial origins of the Hungarians: they like to wander about
(like gypsies radiating out from the same region). They speak an
exceptionally simple and logical language which has not the slightest
connection with the language of their neighbors. And they are so much
smarter than the terrestrials. (In a slight Martian accent John G. Kemeny
added an explanation, namely, that it is so much easier to learn reading and
writing in Hungarian than in English or French, that Hungarian kids have
much more time left to study mathematics.)
Valentine Telegdi recalled his youth [talk in Budapest 1989]: - For a young
Hungarian abroad it may be good to hide his Hungarian descent, because if it
is made known, too much will be expected of him. People will know that he is
one of the Martians of exceptionally high intelligence who use that
incomprehensible language. There was another profession besides science
which was crowded by Hungarian talents, the cinema, - an art born from the
marriage of traditional drama and modern technology.
Landing in Hollywood
- Legend has it that Hollywood was founded by Hungarians. (At least in
part.)6 - Sándor Korda was born in Hungary, in the fateful year 1919 he
emigrated to Germany, from there to Hollywood, but reached the peak of his
career in England (The Private Life of Henry VIII and Lady Hamilton), and
became Sir Alexander Korda. The names of Hungarians in Hollywood make a long
list, from Adolph Zukor - born in Ricse (Paramount Pictures) to William Fox
- born in Tolcsva, near Tokaj (20th Century Fox) as founders; from Michael
Curtiz - born in Budapest (Casablanca and The Adventures of Robin Hood) to
Andy Vajna - born in Budapest (Rambo and Evita) as directors; from Menyhard
Lengyel ( Typhoon and Ninotshka) to Joe Esterhas - born in Csákánydoroszló
(Flashdance and Basic Instinct, working now on a script about the 1956
revolt of Hungary) as screenwriters; from Laszlo Kovacs - born in Budapest
(Easy Riders and Free Willy) to Willy Zigmond (Close Encounter of the Third
Kind and The Dear Hunter) as cinematographers; from Bela Lugosi - born in
Lugos (Frankenstein and Dracula) to Zsa Zsa Gabor - born in Budapest (Moulin
Rouge and A Nightmare on Elm Street) as actors, and so on. A special
attraction to atoms has been shown by Ciccolina - born as Ilona Staller in
Budapest (in her Orgia Atomica). There is also a list of second generation
Hungarian actors like Tony Curtis - fluent in Hungarian (stylishly the
Lobster Man from Mars and The Boston Strangler who Likes it Hot) through
Paul Newman ( The Sting, then Exodus, followed by a Long Hot Summer) up to
Leslie Howard - born László Steiner (A Free Soul, later The Scarlet
Pimpernel, to be Captured! and then Gone with the Wind). (Howard was wounded
in World War I; while flying an airplane near Gibraltar on a secret mission
in World War II he was shot down in action, according to myth at the direct
order of Hitler. ) Hungarians have been laureated by Oscar Awards: George
Cukor (director), József Rufusz (cartoon director), Vilmos Zsigmond
(cinematographer), Adolph Zukor (for life's work). On the wall of Zukor's
office there was an inscription:
TO BE A HUNGARIAN IS NOT ENOUGH.
In a low voice Adolph added: - But it may help. - Non-Hungarians in
Hollywood used to say, - If you have a Hungarian friend, you don't need an
enemy. - According to Norman Macrae, the biographer of John von Neumann,
- The American word "movie" probably derived from the Hungarian "mozi. "
Cynics says that Hungarians created America's Hollywood before other
Hungarians less destructively created America's A-bomb.
István Szabó (1938-), the Oscar winner Hungarian director, recently made a
film for the BBC about the capital city of Hungary. - I called this film
"Staying Afloat" because to me Budapest is like a boat trying not to capsize
as it is buffeted by waves from all directions. We've been lashed by history
and we mustn't let it suck us under. The very air of Budapest exudes this
daily struggle for survival, this feeling that we're clinging to the rails;
this is why I love my city.
Coming from outer space
There is only one single factual piece of evidence about the descent from
planet Mars: there is a mount named Von Kármán Crater on the Red Planet.
Hungarians left more traces on the Moon: a huge ring in the southern part of
the far side of the Moon has also been named Von Kármán Crater, honoring the
pioneer of supersonic flight. East of it is the tiny crater honoring Imre
Izsák, the Hungarian-American expert of celestial mechanics of the Space Age
(1929-1965). In the North-West, near the lunar Terminator Line, halfway
between H.G. Wells and F. Joliot is the great Szilard Crater of 122 km in
diameter. East of it astronauts may find the Von Neumann Crater. Further
l9th century Hungarians, who did not cross the Ocean, also deserved place on
the Lunar Map: in the southern part of the far side are János Bolyai
(pioneer of non-Euclidean geometry, 1802-1880); a bit east of it is Roland
Eötvös. A tiny crater represents Gyula Fényi, the Jesuit solar astronomer
(1845-1927), another one the Austro-Hungarian Nobel laureate, Richard
Zsigmondy. But there is a Martian who proved that the craters on the Moon
are not products of lunar volcanism but had been created by impacts of
meteors from outside: Egon Orowan, while working on plasticity and fractures
in solids, studied high resolution photographs brought back by the Apollo
missions.7 (There is indeed an asteroid named Teller orbiting around the
Sun, discovered by E.F. Helin in 1989.)
Speaking an alien tongue
An obvious explanation of the myth of the Martians may be their strange
language: its grammar and vocabulary are quite distinct from those of the
Indo-European languages. Kármán and Bárány proudly accented the á in their
names at all times, in spite of the opposition of computerized word
processors. (The Báránys did so through generations.) When polyglott
Valentine Telegdi decided to learn Japanese, he rushed to Budapest to buy a
Japanese language book written in Hungarian, because Hungarian grammar is
similar to Japanese, while for an English author it is difficult to explain
how Japanese think and speak. (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans put family name
first, given name as last; in Europe only the Hungarian language follows
this rule.)
According to myth, at a top secret meeting of the Manhattan Project General
Groves left for the gents' room. Szilard then said: - Perhaps we may now
continue in Hungarian! - Hungarian emigrees enjoyed speaking their mother
tongue whenever a chance offered itself. This has made them look suspicious.
Los Alamos was a place of top security. General Groves was annoyed that
Neumann and Wigner had frequent telephone conversations in Hungarian.
[Teller, talk in Budapest 1991.] The "thick Hungarian accent" was often
heard even in the corridors of the Pentagon. (The Lugosi accent made the
alien power of Dracula, the count from the faraway Transylvania even more
realistic. )
This explanation of the myth, however, is certainly not sufficient. Let us
quote now George Békésy:
- If a person traveling outside Hungary is recognized as a Hungarian due to
his accent, something which - beyond a certain age - is impossible to drop,
the question is asked almost in every case: "How is it possible that a
country as small as Hungary has given the world so many internationally
renown scientists?" There are Hungarians who have tried to give an answer.
For my part: I cannot find an answer, but I would mention one thing. When I
lived in Switzerland, everything was peaceful, quiet and secure; we had no
problems earning a living. In Hungary, life was different, and we all were
involved in an ongoing struggle for almost everything which we wanted,
although this struggle never caused anybody's perdition. Sometimes we won;
sometimes we lost; but we always survived. It did not bring an end to
things, not in my case anyway. People need such challenges, and these have
existed throughout the history of Hungary.
Crossroads in space-time
It is a fact of history that the great figures of human culture are not
distributed evenly in space and time. They concentrated, for example, in
democratic Athens (Aristotle and Sophocles), while the city was fighting
against Persian invasions; in renaissance Florence (Michelangelo and
Galileo), in a city struggling with the supremacy of the Pope; at the dawn
of the English industrial revolution (Shakespeare and Newton), while
fighting the Spanish Armada. Quiet periods require only social adjustment.
Under a changing climate, however, old schemes no longer work, such
conditions encourage creative individuals. If a very different final truth
is offered each month, young people learn critical thinking, and become more
interested in facts than in axioms. During the recent political turmoil a
joke circulated: - What is the most unpredictable thing today in Hungary?
The past! - Psychology teaches us that an impact-rich environment cultivates
talent. To support this view, let's quote one of the strangest Martians,
Arthur Koestler8:
- When Tom Corbett, Space Cadett, behaves on the Third Planet of Orion
exactly in the same way as he does in a drugstore in Minnesota, one is
tempted to ask him: "Was your journey really necessary?"
There may be historical reasons for this alien coherence of the Hungarians:
- Hungary was usually in turmoil; a situation attributable mainly to an
accident of geography.9 - As Kati Marton (Mrs Holbrook), who left Hungary as
a child in 1957, said,l0 - My parents had too much history. - My thesis is
that Hungary (together with her Central-European neighbors) has been at the
crossroads of history, where the routes from Rome (Catholicism), Germany
(Reformation), Russia (Eastern Orthodox Christianity), Osman Empire (Islam)
met each other, presenting alternatives and igniting conflicts. Armies from
East and West were marching on the roads through centuries. We have learned
agriculture from the Slavs, the Renaissance arrived from Italy, and industry
came from Germany. Through one and a half centuries the armies of the Osman
Empire took everything what they could from the Hungarian peasants - but
pigs; this is why pork is the favorite meat of the Hungarians till today.
Grapes were introduced by the veterans of the Roman legions, in oder to make
wine. Beer-brewing came from Germany. The Russians have shown how to distill
vodka. And the Turks introduced the strong black coffee, a present national
drink of the Hungarians. So much about the first Hungarian millenium.
A hundred years ago (when the Martian heroes of this book were born), a
German-speaking Emperor-King ruled Hungary, supported by feudal landlords.
But the industrial revolution was already in full swing, having brought the
parliamentary system, compulsory education (1868) - and unsolved social
contradictions. In 1896 politicians in Parliament spoke of the glory of the
past thousand years of Hungarian history, but the world exposition,
organized in Budapest to honor the millenium, presented new physical
inventions and the first underground metro system on the continent was
already operational in Budapest (second only to London).
As the 20th century arrived, the Austro-Hungarian Empire started playing the
superpower: Turkey was expelled from most of the Balkan Peninsula.
Austria-Hungary occupied Bosnia (1908), pushing Serbia toward an alliance
with Russia. After a Serbian nationalist murdered the Habsburg crown-prince
in Sarajevo (1914), war was declared against Serbia. Russia rushed to help
the Serbs, Germany responded by attacking Russia, France and England
declared war against Germany. Thus World War I was started, and was lost.
After the military collapse Michael Károlyi, the liberal Count rose against
the Austrian emperor and created a pro-Western democratic Hungarian Republic
(31 October 1918). But with the encouragement of the Western Powers the
neighboring countries attacked Hungary. Károlyi resigned, and a communist
government organized resistance - looking for help from Moscow (21 March
1919). Their defense efforts could not last for long: Budapest was invaded
by foreign troops (July 1919). Finally a group of Hungarian army officers
assembled and took power (November 1919), made the country formally a
kingdom again (but the military rulers expelled the Habsburg king trying to
return). The rightist military rule took revenge. A wave of emigration
began.
Almost all the Martians attended university and began their careers in
Germany, where and when quantum mechanics had been born. This does not
contradict but confirms our thesis that conflicts cultivate creativity. The
1920s were the decade of the Weimar Republic, which was full of
psychological conflicts: the democracy was overshadowed by the lost World
War ("Dolchstoss von hinten" ), the dream of a new German Empire (das Dritte
Reich), the trilemma of liberalism-communism-nazism. This fruitful period of
the coexistence of contradicting ideologies lasted there over ten years,
before terminating in the tragedies of the economic crisis, dictatorship,
and war.
A similar critical but creative period of accelerating history was
experienced in Petrograd in the early 1920s, after the fall of the Czar and
before the rise of Stalin, resulting in an explosion of creativity. In
Hungary, however, all these revolutions and counter-revolutions happened in
a mere twelve months!
The most sensitive period in human life is being a teenager, when one's
personal system of values is built up. The diagram indicates that the
Martians - so successful in later years across the Ocean - attended high
schools in Hungary just at the time of the great World Wars (figure). What a
privilegized time to live in!
When were the Martians teenagers?
*
The Jews were expelled from Western Europe 500 years ago, but were welcome
in Eastern Europe for bringing trade and industry, especially by the king of
Poland. In the l9th century Poland was divided among Germany, Austria, and
Russia. Escaping from the pogroms encouraged by Russian orthodox priests,
the Jews moved southwards, towards Hungary, adding to her former Jewish
population. According to ancient law, Jews were forbidden to own land, so
they turned toward trade and industry. Their wealth was increased by the
industrial revolution. At the proposal of the Minister of Culture, the
enlightened Baron József Eötvös (the father of the physicist Roland Eötvös)
the Hungarian Parliament emancipated the Jews (1867). Some of them were made
noblemen for their services in the economy (e.g. the father of George Hevesy
in 1895, the father of Theodore Kármán in 1907, the father of John Neumann
in 1913). One hundred years ago (1895) Baron Roland Eötvös, a physicist
served as Minister of Culture just for a few months. Because he was an
aristocrat, he was able to convince the conservative Parliament to widen
civil rights, including complete religious freedom and civilian marriage.
Around 1900, in the tolerant social climate of Hungary over 50% of all the
lawyers and medical doctors had Jewish roots. In the eyes of conservative
nationalists, however, the Jews remained menacingly aliens. When the
opportunity arose during the right-wing restoration (1920), the first
anti-Jewish law, the numerus clausus was enacted in Hungary; according to
it, the percentage of Jewish university students was restricted to the
percentage of the Jewish population in the country as a whole (1920). Thus
history was even more compressed in time for the Jews. The place of origin
for the wandering Jew, the fictional Leopold Bloom (alias Virág Lipót) was
placed in Hungary by James Joyce, describing the contemplative day of 16
June 1904 on the streets of Dublin in the novel appropriately entitled
Ulysses.
Theodore Herzl (1860-1904), the founder of the movement for an independent
Jewish state was born and attended school in Budapest. After graduation he
left Hungary to study law in Vienna (1878), and he died in Austria. (Now a
grand boulvard in Tel-Aviv is named Herzl Street, a hill in Jerusalem is
Mount Herzl.) - The word "Holocaust" (burning completely to dust) was first
used by peace-Nobel-laureate Elie Wiesel.
On this spot of the globe, within distances less than 1000 km, we find
Albanians, Austrians, Bosnians, Croatians, Czechs, Gypsies, Hungarians,
Jews, Slovakians, Slovenians, each possessing their own language, their own
culture, most of them their own country with a population of a few million
or even less. (This may remind us of the city-states of Greece in Antiquity
or the city-states of Italy in the Renaissance, but here the
linguistic-cultural heritages differ even more.) The tolerated coexistence
and sparking conflict of cultures were present not only in foreign affairs
or in the sectors of the Parliament but within the heads of young
individuals. For example, it could happen in the family that the father
spoke Hungarian, the mother spoke German, grandma's family originated
somewhere in Poland, grandpa kept the Jewish feasts, the school teacher
taught Christianity. Around 1900 for Jews especially, no career was open in
politics, or in the army, they had to choose business. If a successful
businessman wished to provide higher education for his son, he had to send
him to study science or engineering. When later the political climate turned
stormy for them, with the wind blowing from the east these young scientists
sailed westwards. They landed on the coast of the New World at a time of
great challenges and opportunities. Their rich political experiences, their
open minds, and their critical thinking were their strengths. Nicholas Kurti
told the author [Budapest 1990]:
- I don't think we were much more talented than the other students in the
West, but we knew that we could not go back. Our talents would have to be
used. There was no chance for us to waste our talents. - John von Neumann
confirmed: - In this part of Central Europe there was an external pressure
on society, a feeling of extreme insecurity for individuals, and the
necessity to produce the unusual or else face extinction.4 - Not everyone
appreciated this originality. Telegdi recalled Enrico Fermi saying: - All
the Hungarians I met were intelligent or terribly intelligent. Mostly too
intelligent. Well, there are times when it pays to be conventional. Arthur
Koestler expressed the opinion [Ubiquitous Presence]:
- In contrast to Austria and other small countries, Hungary did not have
linguistic contact with her neighbors; Hungarians form an isolated ethnic
enclave in Europe. Hungarian writers could find a wider readership only by
emigrating, by writing in a foreign tongue. But giving up the mother tongue
usually means the end of the career for a poet, or turns him into an
insignificant journalist. Since World War I the main export of Hungary has
consisted of best-selling journalists, producers, movie stars - the
demi-monde of international culture. They were scattered worldwide by a
centrifugal force, which arises when a small country has plenty of talents
without the chance for their unfolding at home. But later I recognized that
this opinion is only one side of the truth. This demi-monde of the cafes and
"gulash-bars" of Vienna, New York, and Tokyo does not represent the most
valuable part of the Hungarian contribution to culture. The really valuable
elements of the Hungarian "export" were absorbed by the physics,
mathematics, and biology departments of universities, furthermore by
hospitals, research laboratories, state committees, and orchestra. I don't
think that a comparable exodus of scientists and artists ever existed since
the fall of Byzantium.
To Koestler's words let us add one remark. It may be that the language of
pictures was easier for immigrant Hungarians in America that speaking and
writing in the foreign tongue. (Vilma Banky was an admired actor until sound
film swept her off the screen for her Hungarian accent. Tony Curtis was born
in the U.S. but he had to take long phonetics lessons to get rid of his
inherited Hungarian accent.) The French film review Positif recently wrote:
- Hollywood gained much from the immigrant Hungarian artists' creative
capacities, dedication to imagery, their tendency of daydreaming.11
Crossing borders
Tourist brochures advertise Hungary as the country of Tokaji wine, red-hot
paprika, gypsy music, csardas dancing. It is less ackowledged that the coach
(1400) and the match (1836), ball-point pen (1943) and Rubik's cube (1978),
alternating current technology (1885) and streamlined airplanes (1928),
tungsten filaments (1905) and krypton-filled light bulbs (1930), radioactive
tracing (1913) and the nuclear reactor (1942), electronically programmable
computers (1946) and time-sharing computer networks (1960), the BASIC
language (1964) and the WORD word processor (1988), among others, emerged
from brains born and schooled in Hungary, and changed the way we live in the
20th century. Wigner's student, Alvin Weinberg designed the safe
water-moderated nuclear reactors; Wigner's other student, John Bardeen
invented the transistor, opening new gates for human progress.
The precondition for the coexistence of different cultures in such a tiny
domain of space-time is tolerance, a merit of Hungarian society, especially
in the early 20th century. Being different enhances critical spirits and
creative associations. There is no better expert on this than Arthur
Koestler who compared his youth to riding a roller-coaster; in his late
years he devoted most of his attention to understanding the interplay
between conflict and creativity.l2 According to him the genius in science or
the arts notices that two concepts - considered beforehand to belong to
completely different dimensions - are deeply interrelated, even identical.
(There are several examples of such insights in the history of science
initiating scientific revolutions: Light / electricity. Heat / disorder.
Mass / energy. DNA / heredity. Struggle / evolution. ) If the student is
instructed to memorize only traditional skills, rules, laws, and boundaries
postulated by axioms, then he may not recognize further interrelations
presented by reality. But if someone is exposed to contradictions, he will
not be afraid of wild associations. As Koestler has put it,
- The manner in which some of the most important individual discoveries were
arrived reminds one more of a sleepwalker's performance than an electronic
brain's.
*
- Chemistry and physics could only become united after physics had renounced
the dogma of the indivisibility and impermeability of the atom, and
chemistry had renounced its doctrine of ultimate immutable elements. A new
evolutionary departure is only possible after a certain amount of
de-differentiation, a cracking and thawing of the frozen structures
resulting from isolated, over-specialized development. Perhaps our age of
specialists is again in need of creative trespassers.l3
Well, Martians don't respect political and disciplinary boundaries; this
might be how these refugees from the Wild East of Europe came to deserve the
adjective: Mad Hungarians. It is impossible to classify them according to
well-established disciplines; they show an inherent interdisciplinary
spirit. It is hard to tell whether George von Békésy, Andrew Grove, George
de Hevesy, John von Neumann, George Olah, Michael Polanyi, Edward Teller,
Valentine Telegdi, Eugene P. Wigner, Richard A. Zsigmondy were chemical
engineers (as their university diplomas indicate) or biologists,
mathematicians, physicists, philosophers.
Geophysics was introduced by Roland Eötvös who, after having studied the
accurate proportionality of inertia and gravity, applied his gravimeter to
peep below the Earth's surface, to find oil. George de Hevesy applied
radioactivity to geochronology as first. Egon Orowan used his pioneering
results on plastic dislocations in solids to explain the motion of glaciers,
drifts of continents, and the formation of mid-oceanic rifts.
Biophysics is a favorite hunting place for Martians: Robert Bárány, Erwin
Bauer, Albert Szent-Györgyi started from medicine, George von Békésy, Leo
Szilard, Eugene P. Wigner from engineering, to cross the physics/biology
borderline. Wigner estimated the mathematical probability for the
spontaneous emergence of life in the framework of quantum mechanics. Szilard
experimented with evolution and speculated about the biochemistry of aging.
John von Neumann, the mathematician, distinguished the role of software and
hardware in the living cell before biologists clarified the distinct roles
of DNA and enzymes; he constructed cellular automatons on the computer
screen to explain self-reproducing molecules, and wrote a book about the
computer and the brain. Martian mathematicians, physicists, and chemists
cannot resist biological temptations.
Information theory is an emerging new development on the border of
traditional disciplines. It originated with Leo Szilard's paper on the
conflict between information-creating intelligence and disorder-creating
thermodynamics (1929). John von Neumann recognized first the revolutionary
importance of electronically programmable computers; after artillery
trajectories he applied them to meteorology, economics, and strategy. He was
followed by John Harsanyi, Nobel laureated for developing game theory in
economics for players with imperfect informations. Dennis Gabor received the
Nobel Prize for extracting the complete information carried by a light ray
with the technique of holography. John G. Kemeny recognized that computers
were for every (educated) person, therefore he invented the Beginner's
All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC). Charles Simonyi is now the
chief architect of Microsoft, the most successful software company. Andy
Grove is the president and chief executive officer at Intel, the most
successful hardware company. Hungary prepared the on-board computers for the
Russian long-distance space missions, which reached Mars and Comet Halley.
The RECOGNITA - software made in Hungary - is able to read hand-written
texts.
Telling the future
- We live in an age in which the pace of technological change is pulsating
ever faster, causing waves that spread outward everywhere. This increased
rate of change will have an impact on you, no matter what you do for a
living - it will bring new competition from new ways of doing things, from
corners that you don't expect. It doesn't matter where you live. Long
distances used to be a moat that both insulated and isolated peop1e from
workers on the other side of the globe. But every day, technology narrows
that moat inch by inch. Every person in the world is on the verge of
becoming both coworker and competitor to every one of us. We can't stop
changes. We can't hide from them. Instead, we must focus on getting ready
for them. - This was written by Andrew Grove in his book Only the Paranoid
Survive.l4
In a stable world sensing the state of the environment, the so-called
"social adjustment" has survival value. In a variable climate, however,
noticing the trends of change (the time derivative), sensing coming storms
helps one survive. This explains another Martian characteristic: the
capability to predict the future.
- Leo Szilard proved to be the best prognosticator: he was able to foresee
events better than anybody else I know - Ben Liebowitz said. When World War
I erupted, Leo Szilard, then 16, told his classmates: - I am not afraid to
be called to the army; Austria, Germany, and Russia will collapse. - This
prediction sounded strange because Russia was on the side opposite to that
of Austria-Hungary and Germany, but Szilard turned out to be right! After
World War I, in the 1920s he tried to organize a Bund in Berlin, which
"might stand ready to exercise the functions of government if and when the
parliamentary system in Germany collapses, one or two generations hence. "15
Hitler took power in 1933. Szilard left Berlin one day before Hitler ordered
that Jews must not leave Germany. He did not stay in Austria either because
in 1936 he anticipated, - Nazi Germany will invade Austria in two years. -
So it happened in 1938. In London he told Michael Polanyi: - I shall go to
America one year before war breaks out in Europe. - He sailed in 1938, World
War II started in 1939. After the war (1945), there was a disagreement
concerning the Russian capability to construct an atomic bomb. Vannevar
Bush, director at the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development
guessed a decade; Szilard predicted five years. The first Soviet atomic bomb
actually exploded in September 1949. Szilard wrote in his letter to Stalin
(1947): - It will only be a question of time, a few short years perhaps,
until peace will be at the mercy of some Yugoslav general in the Balkans or
some American admiral in the Mediterranean who may willfully or through
bungling create an incident that will inevitably result in a new war.16 --
In Yugoslavia we witness today the Catholic [Croatian]-Eastern Orthodox
[Serbian]-Islam [Bosnian] conflict, and the superpower play behind it,
having turned again to war. As Leo Szilard has summarized: - You don't have
to be cleverer, you just have to be one day earlier.
- My father taught me that one gains very little knowledge of how to behave
as a nation from looking at year-to-year changes. To find the true worth of
historical experience, one must examine generations - Von Kármán recalled.
It is Central Europe where history happens. World War I erupted in Sarajevo
(Bosnia). World War II started in Danzig (Gdansk, Poland). The focus of the
present greatest European conflict was again Sarajevo. Condensed historical
experiences enable the scientists living here to notice the trends more
acutely than those living in quieter regions. Dennis Gabor had already
written in 1938: What a Price of Peace!
- President Wilson's 1919 doctrine about national self-determination was so
self-evidently right that people did not see what nonsense it was. - The
problem is that people in Bosnia, Chechnya, Kurdistan, and elsewhere still
believe in it.
John von Neumann also wrote in June 1938: - I think , that there will be
war, although it may be at a distance of a half year or perhaps even one or
two years. - (The exact time of grace left was 15 months.) About the Western
surrender in the case of Czechoslovakia in Munich (30 September 1938) he
said: - I can only say that Mr. Chamberlain obviously wanted to do me a
great personal favor. I needed a postponement of the next world war very
badly - because Neumann traveled to Budapest to marry in November. In 1940
the German army cut through France as Neumann predicted, but he also
expressed the unbelievable views that Britain would deter a German invasion,
and whichever president was going to be elected in 1940, would probably
bring America into the war in 1941. (So it happened.) He thought that free
mankind's two enemies (Hitler and Stalin, that time allies) might by then be
doing the nice thing of fighting each other. - Stanislav Ulam, a fellow
mathematician at the Manhattan Project, said: - I can testify that in his
forecasts of political events leading to World War II and of military events
during the war, most of von Neumann's gueesses were amazingly correct.l7
Egon Orowan - a physicist turned mechanical engineer - picked up writings of
Ibn-Khaldun, the l4th century Tunisian Arab historian, about the rise,
maturation, and senescence of Arabic tribes from dynamic beginnings to rich
and decadent ends, when they are replaced by a new wave of dynamic invaders.
Orowan has found many parallels to these in modern Western societies where
economics becomes to be of central importance. Beginning at Adam Smith and
Malthus, Orowan concluded that the present problems of industralized Western
societies result from ever increasing productivity which replaces the old
crafts of many skilled craftsmen with automated industries. The outcome is
chronic unemployment followed by government's "charity" in the form of
armanent industry, in government contracts for public work and research
centers not necessarily needed by society. Orowan liked to call his approach
to socionomy, coined from sociology+economy.
- Till now man has been up against Nature, from now on he will be up against
his own nature - said Dennis Gabor.l8 - Our civilization faces three great
dangers. The first is destruction by nuclear war, the second is
overpopulation, and the third is the Age of Leisure. For the first time in
history we are now faced with the possibility of a world in which only a
minority needs work to keep the great majority in idle luxury. Soon the
minority which has to work for the rest may be so small that it could be
entirely recruited from the most gifted part of the population. Almost every
important invention unbalances the front of progress, and a new invention is
needed to redress the balance. Disinfectants have reduced child mortality,
and we need the "pill" to keep the population in bounds. The steam engine,
the internal combustion engine are threatening our stock of fossile fuel
with exhaustion; we must have nuclear power and later on thermonuclear
power. We cannot stop inventing, because we are riding a tiger.
*
- It's like sailing a boat when the wind shifts on you but for some reason,
maybe because you are down below, you don't even sense that the wind has
changed until the boat suddenly keels over. What worked before doesn't work
anymore; you need to steer the boat in a different direction quickly before
you are in trouble, yet you have to get a feel of the new direction and the
strength of the wind before you can hope to right the boat and set a new
course. And the tough part is that it is exactly at times like this that
hard and definite actions are required. So the ability to recognize that the
winds have shifted and to take appropriate action before you wreck your boat
is crucial to the future of an enterprise. - This is what Andrew Grove, a
skilled navigator says about his experiences, failures, and successes.14
Perhaps the storms experienced by Martian sailors beforehand in Europe
enabled Szilard to sense the approach of the Atomic Era and Neumann to feel
the coming of the Computer Era. What do common terrestrials do when the
storm arrives?
- When the environment changes in such a way as to render the old skills and
strengths less relevant, we almost instinctively cling to our past. We
refuse to acknowledge changes around us, almost like a child who doesn't
like what he's seeing so he closes his eyes and counts to 100 and figures
that what bothered him will go away. The phrase you're likely to hear from
grownups at such times is "Just give us a bit more time."14
*
Correct forecasting of the future may make money. - Countervailing forces
usually prevail, but occasionally they fail. That is when we have a change
of regime or revolution. I am particularly interested in this occasion. I
can do better in the financial markets than dealing with history in general,
because financial markets provide a more clearly defined space and the data
are quantified and publicly available - George Soros said.l9 - My basic idea
is that our understanding of the world in which we live is inherently
imperfect. There is always a discrepancy between the participant's views and
expectations and the actual state of affairs. Sometimes the discrepancy is
so small that it can be disregarded but, at other times, the gap is so large
that it becomes an important factor in determining the course of events.
History is made by the participants' errors, biases, and misconceptions. -
Citizens of quiet regions may afford to believe in a fixed set of values,
but Hungarians cannot afford it. This is how Soros explains his successful
intuitions:
- Rationality has its uses, but it also has its limitations. If we insist on
staying within the limits of reason, we cannot cope with the world in which
we live. By contrast, a belief in our fallibility can take us much farther.
It can guide us through life.
Andrew Grove gives the following diagnosis on the state of the world: - When
most companies of a previously regulated economy are suddenly thrust into a
compatitive environment, the changes multiply. Management now has to excel
in the midst of a global cacophony of competing products, and every person
on the labor force suddenly must compete for his or her job with employees
of similar companies on the other side of the globe. When such fundamental
changes hit a whole economy simultaneously, their impact is cataclysmic.
They affect an entire country's political system, its social norms and its
way of life. This is what we see in the former Soviet Union and, in a more
controlled fashion, in China. l4
George Soros warnsl9 that the West is now missing a special opportunity to
lead the former communist world from the closed societies of the past into
the open community of nations: - We do not have much time to come to our
senses. The collapse of the Soviet Empire meant the end of a stable world
order that prevailed during the Cold War, only we did not realize it. We
carry on with business as usual while all our institutions of collective
security are disappearing. The collapse of communism was a revolutionary
event, and a revolution creates opportunities! - Later he added [Time, 10
July 1995]: - We have missed the opportunity, and now it will be forty years
in the wilderness.
Saving the world
A trait related to this peculiar property of the Martians was that they even
tried to save the world. Some of them were considered to be hawks, others
were doves, but each of them felt convinced that he was right.20 - We were -
and still are - trying to shape the future at a time when this idea doesn't
have broad currency. We were - and are - to be early movers - as Andrew
Grove wrote.l4 It may be due to the rich historical heritage of the Martians
that they all liked to offer advice, even to Presidents. Leo Szilard urged
President Roosevelt to develop nuclear power. President Kennedy answered his
letters about the importance of a superpower dialoge, resulting in the
Washington-Moscow hot line. Szilard also contacted Khrushchev, Nehru, and
the Pope. Theodore von Kármán advised President Kennedy on supersonic flight
and ballistic missiles; he met Stalin and Gandhi as well. Eugene P. Wigner
pressed President Johnson on civil defense. John von Neumann advised
President Eisenhower on nuclear and rocket armaments. His daughter, Marina
von Neumann advised President Nixon on economic affairs. Albert
Szent-Györgyi travelled to Moscow to inform Stalin about the misbehavior of
the Red Army in Hungary; invited President Kennedy to his home; criticized
President Johnson bitterly for his war in Vietnam; even wrote a Presidential
Speech - never told. John G. Kemeny advised President Carter on the safety
of nuclear plants at the time of the Three Mile Island accident. Edward
Teller advised President Reagan on Star Wars; he is in contact with the
prime ministers of Israel and Hungary concerning national modernization
programs. Elie Wiesel received the Medal of the Congress and President
Reagan made him chairman of The President's Commission of the Holocaust.
George Soros asked President Clinton to devote more attention to
Central-Eastern Europe. As journalists claim, Soros used to have breakfast
with one head of state, and dinner with another one on the very same day. -
I am not ashamed of my messianic fantasies; the world would be a grim place
without such fantasies.l9
In the middle of the night Arthur Koestler called and woke up Gaitskell, the
leader of the British Labour Party, before Gaitskell's visit to Moscow,
asking for his intervention at Krushchev in order to save the life of the
Hungarian writer Tibor Déry after 1956 - and he succeeded. In the 1930s,
during his visits to the Soviet Union, Michael Polanyi contacted Bukharin,
chief of scientific and technological planning. In conclusion, let us quote
Dennis Gabor, one of the most ardent prophets, who took a long view ahead in
his evangelium entitled Inventing the Future.
- Technological development is much too fast to be matched by biological
adaptation of man. Moses showed the Promised Land to his people, but then he
led them around for forty years in the wilderness until a new generation
worthy of it had grown up. Now forty years is not an unreasonable estimate
for educating a new generation which can live in leisure, but we must find a
better equivalent of the wilderness. At the present stage of technology the
time ought to be shorter - merely the time to train teachers and for the
teachers to train the first generation of modern workers. It is not so much
the education of the people which is slow but the education of the leaders.
The prophecies of Hungarians were not always appreciated by their fellow
scientists. Still, eventually, some of their forecasts and advice were
acknowledged in America - because they worked. This has made the liberation
of nuclear power also a Martian success story. The first six recipients of
the Atoms for Peace Award were Niels Bohr (1957) for the theory of the atom
and its nucleus, George de Hevesy (1958) for radioactive tracing and its
application in medicine, Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner (1959), as well as
Alvin Martin Weinberg and Walter Henry Zinn (1960), "to honor the four men,
who, of all men living, have done most to originate and perfect the nuclear
fission chain reactor. It alone, of all devices thus far conceived, provides
practical means for utilizing the energy of the atomic nucleus and producing
radio-isotopes in abundance. These gifts of the atom, if used wisely, will
be of inestimable benefit to mankind. " - (A Dane, a Canadian, an American
and three Hungarians make up this list.)
REFERENCES
George Marx: "Beszélgetés Marslakókkal" (interviews in Hungarian).
OOK-Press, Veszprém, Hungary (1992) 145 pages. George Marx: "The Voice of
the Martians;" first edition Eötvös Physical Society, Budapest (1993) 230
pages; second edition Hungarian Academy Press, Budapest (1997), 420 pages.
This paper is essentially a chapter from the last quoted book.
First page in Francis Crick's book: "The Life Itself." Macdonald, London
1982.
Norman Macrea: "John von Neumann." Pantheon Books, New York (1992)
Richard Rhodes: "The Making of the Atomic Bomb." Simon&Schuster, N.Y.(1986)
Leon Lederman: "The God Particle." Boston (1993)
"Hungarians in Film." Magyar Filmunió, Budapest (1996), p.6.
Proceedings of the Royal Society, A336 (1974) p. 141.
Arthur Koestler: "The Boredom of Phantasy" (1955)
A. Blumberg - G. Owens: "Energy and Conflict." G. P. Putnam, New York (1976)
Newsweek, 17 February 1997
"Hungarians in Film," loc.cit. p.53.
Arthur Koestler: "The Act of Creation." Hutchinson, London (1964)
Arthur Koestler: "The Sleepwalkers." Hutchinson, London-Macmillan, N.Y.
(1959)
Andrew S. Grove: "Only the Paranoid Survive." Doubleday, New York (1996)
Leo Szilard: "His Version of Facts," selected recollections; editors S. R.
Weart - G. Szilard. MIT Press, Cambridge MA (1978)
Sending this letter was not permitted. Printed in the Bulletin of Atomic
Scientists.
"John von Neumann Memorial Volume" (1958)
Dennis Gabor: "Inventing the Future." Alfred A. Knopf, New York (1964)
George Soros - B. Wien - K. Koenen: "Soros on Soros." John Wiley, New York
(1995)
This aspect has been emphasized by Gábor Palló.
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Természettudományi
és tudománytörténeti
dokumentumok
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A dokumentum megjelentetését a Magyar Elektronikus Könyvtár (MEK), a Neumann
János Kulturális Szolgáltató Közhasznú Társaság és a KFKI Részecske- és
Magfizikai Kutató Intézet Számítógép Hálózati Központjának közös pályázata
keretében a Nemzeti Kulturális Alap támogatta.
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