István Hargittai is a professor of chemistry at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. Member of several academic councils across Europe, he is also a noted science historian who has interviewed over a hundred Nobel laureates and written several well-received books. Hargittai visited NCBS during September 2011 for the first set of talks in the Science and Society series. He talked about 'Scientific, moral and ethical battles in the making of a nuclear world' which emanated from his recent book The Martians of Science. The book tells the story of five Hungarian scientists who escaped to the United States of America during World War II. Their immense contribution to science influenced the creation of the atomic and hydrogen bombs. Hargittai's talk at NCBS focused on Edward Teller, the father of the American hydrogen bomb, and the moral and ethical questions that arose when the first atomic bomb was made.

Hargittai is a man with a bag full of stories - and incredibly interesting ones, which he is always ready to share. I had the honor of interviewing him, and here are some of those tales.