July 25, 2018 Wednesday
Bedtime Story
Leo Szilard and the Martians
We shall continue tonight with the abstract
from Marx’s “The Martians”:
“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,” – Femi came to the overwhelming
question, - “if all his 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 the Fermi Paradox:
“They are among us,” – he said - , “But
they call themselves Hungarians.””
Just to elaborate on the humor of Leo
Szilard, a Hungarian-German-American physicist who conceived of the idea of
nuclear chain reaction (that was dismissed rudely aside by Rutherford) and thus
played a key role in the development and fruition of the Manhattan Project, I
shall briefly decipher the cryptic statement of Szilard.
Somewhere around the World War II, both
before and after, many scientists and mathematicians both from the Western and
the Central Europe emigrated to the United States to escape the fascism that
was gulfing Europe.
The task of the Nazis after the war was
taken over with great zeal by Stalin’s communism and perverted Marxism behind
the iron curtain against which the Hungarians vehemently rebelled but as is
well known Soviet dictators would brutally crush down any such type of uprising
with an iron hand.
Among those who emigrated to the United
States a substantial and significant portion was Hungarian of Jewish decent
that included John von Neumann, Eugene Wigner, George Pólya, Paul Erdös, Leo
Szilard, Edward Teller (“father of the Hydrogen Bomb”) among others.
The list is very long and their contributions
to the American science are remarkably highly out of proportion with their
relative number to the total number of émigrés from Europe.
What was common to all these Hungarians
that like Hindus they spoke English with a strange-sounding strong accent that
made them stand out in the society and perhaps made them difficult to
assimilate into the general American society (within the Academia and
Universities such accents are irrelevant and perhaps even welcomed).
With their strong accent, superhuman
intelligence and origins from an obscure Eastern Bloc country it did not take
much time nor imagination for them to be christened as the Martians.
It may have offended them initially for all
I know but they also found it humorous and hence they adopted it themselves.
People like John Von Neumann not only
adopted the name for themselves but also came out with humorous evidence and
anecdotes to justify the christened name.
We shall continue with the story of the
Martians in the nights to come.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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