Photographs of Eugene Wigner and Theodore Von Karman from photos.aip.org. Others from wikipedia.org.

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.

We are really glad you are here for the launch of our Science and Society programme. Could you give us an idea of what you are going to talk about in your seminar?

The essence is that there was a group of five scientists originating from Hungary during the first half of the last century who became physicists. They were refugees from Hungary and later from Europe. They ended up in the United States and influenced the outcome of the twentieth century. This sounds pretentious, but if we enumerate what they did, we will feel that there is some truth in this. They are called the "Martians of Science". The origin of this label was during the Manhattan Project, the atomic bomb project in United States in World War II. One of the greatest physicists of the twentieth century, Enrico Fermi noted that there was a relatively large number of scientists of Hungarian origin who were participating in this project and he wondered how it happened. One of these Hungarian physicists said that they were not really Hungarians, but Martians who spoke Hungarian only for camouflage.

They all came from upper middle class Jewish families in Budapest, from a fairly small region: so they were born and brought up not far from each other. They went to three different high schools - secondary schools. In Hungary, secondary school education at that time was very good, whereas university education was not so outstanding. This is one component. Another component was that these kids came from Jewish families who didn't feel secure in Hungary. Their parents encouraged them to learn foreign languages to acquire a profession that was international because they always felt that there would come a time when they would have to leave Hungary. That's exactly what happened.

Sometimes we wonder if this exodus of Jewish intellectuals from Europe hadn't occurred, how different would the world have been? They could have contributed to their own country or may be to that region.

This is a very interesting question. Those European countries from where this exodus happened, discriminated and later persecuted these people, whereas countries like great Britain and the United States welcomed them. So this is a question of the differences between societies that are closed which push out people who are different versus societies that integrate other people. But it is difficult to imagine what would have happened had they stayed, because they could have stayed only if those societies had turned democratic. They were not democratic; they were totalitarian. So, your question pertains to a huge problem of the whole background of these societies. Germany, for example, could have built an atomic bomb if these scientists had stayed in Germany. But then, Germany then should have been a democratic country that would not have needed an atomic bomb.

When there was this big exodus of Jewish scientists from Germany, Max Planck, who was one of the greatest scientists of the twentieth century and was German, went to see Adolf Hitler. He told him about the big loss for Germany. Hitler answered that he did not care if there would be no science in Germany for some years, that it didn't matter to him. And of course this was a tragedy, not only for the Jewish scientists, but also for Germany. Having said this, I would also like to stress on that fact that the German scientists who didn't leave Germany were also very good. So we should not underestimate the power of science in Germany at that time. There was an atomic bomb project in Germany but it didn't succeed. Even though very excellent physicists participated in it, and they tried, they didn't succeed. Now this has to be emphasized because after the war some of these German scientists declared themselves morally superior to the American scientists of the Manhattan Project, saying that they, the German scientists, didn't want to give this terrible weapon to Hitler. This was not true because they tried, they only did not succeed.

Only a few groups of scientists, like the Martians of Science, have managed to change the world. What was their secret?

First of all, four of them focused on the atomic bomb project. One, von Kármán was working for the American Air Force, but the other four (Szilard, Wigner, von Neumann, and Teller) worked for the atomic bomb project and their effect was more concentrated. One of the reasons is that most American scientists had already signed up for war-related work by then, they had already been engaged especially with radar and other projects. The atomic bomb project started after the discovery of nuclear fission. The newcomers, mostly the refugees, went to the atomic bomb project. These refugees recognized the danger of Nazism and Fascism early on. They recognized it more than their American friends because they had already experienced it in Europe. So whereas the Americans were a little oblivious to this danger, the Hungarian, Italian and German refugees were aware of it. Another factor that is probably very universal, is that when you are an immigrant in a country, you don't have the background, you don't have the support. Maybe you don't have some other worries either, but you have to prove yourself. And if you ever look at the United States today, you will see that Asian students are doing very well, not the Jewish students (laughs) anymore. The Asian students come without much support, they have to prove themselves, and they try harder.

Talking about the Manhattan Project and atomic bomb, scientists who discover or invent potentially dangerous things, like those which can be used in warfare, have a dilemma-to do it or not do it. How do they overcome this? How did Edward Teller overcome this?

I don't think they have a dilemma in doing the research. Enrico Fermi, when they asked him about this, said that first of all, this was interesting physics. And generally speaking, you cannot stop scientific research just because the outcome may be dangerous. Almost every scientific finding may be applied for negative things also. Of course scientists in the Manhattan Project were afraid that Hitler might acquire the atomic bomb so the United States needed to build it first. But generally speaking, and let me quote Leo Szilard, one of the five Martians. He posed this question, "Is it the responsibility of the scientist what happens in the applications of his inventions or discoveries?" He said, "No. This is not the responsibility of the scientists. This is the responsibility of society." Of course, Szilard tried to influence society, especially political leaders, about the direction to take with the applications. But his general approach was, let society decide. I would like to add something: if we say okay, if the scientist makes the discovery, then he is just one of the many members of the society to decide what to do with the discovery. This is not entirely so, because the scientist knows much more and unfortunately the society is not very well informed. So I would say it is the duty of the scientist not only to make the discovery, but also to help society to become informed. I think you are also doing that now - popularizing science, to help people understand science. I think this is a very important task and it is becoming increasingly important with the progress of science because science is becoming more and more difficult to understand.

When we talk about science and society, we perceive things like history, culture or literature as something completely opposite to physics or chemistry. How do we bridge them, bring them together?

First of all I consider science - physics, chemistry, biology, and also mathematics, as a part of our culture. It is an artificial division when we expect scientists to be versed in literature and not expect artists to know anything about science. This not only their loss it is also the loss of society because society as we have said must make very important decisions about science. Sometime ago I was a visiting professor in Austin, Texas, and I received a big bonus for teaching a course titled 'Science for Non-scientists'. I was told that this course was much more important than my chemistry course, because I had to teach this course to future lawyers, economists, politicians, newspapermen, and similar professionals. These people were going to be in responsible positions to make decisions concerning science also. They were more likely to become members of parliament and members of the US Congress than physicists, chemists, mathematicians and biologists. Here I would like to note a difference between European and American education. In Europe we get a lot of science in secondary education for everybody. But then if you go to humanities, social sciences and economics at the university level, there is no science whatsoever. In the United States, there is unfortunately very little science in secondary education. But all university students regardless of whether they major in the humanities, social sciences or science, must take some science courses. And I think because they are actually more mature at that time this may be especially useful. This helps bridging the gap. The great British writer C. P. Snow wrote about 'The Two Cultures'. One culture is the humanities, literature and everything else, and the other culture is science, mathematics, and technology. This gap should be bridged, and it is vital not only because people make decisions for their countries and for whole populations, but also because every one of us must make some decisions. The progress in medicine, for example - the utilization of information about our genetics buildup necessitates some elementary knowledge for everybody. Our doctor can no longer decide everything for us. So we all must be better informed. Rather than become just knowledgeable for the sake of knowledge, this is going to be vitally important.

Scientists have the responsibility of communicating with the society because they know about the things they are working on. What is the correct way to go about this? A lot of scientists who try to communicate with society do it in completely scientific language, which most people cannot understand.

I don't know the answer, but it may be that this is going to be a separate profession, to communicate science to the non-scientists, to communicate science to the general public. This problem should be faced and solved. In any case I think that scientists are responsible for the support they get from the society. So when they write a proposal, I think in addition to the dry scientific description of what they would like to do, they should include a page or at least a paragraph that is understandable to the common people because it is the legislature, it is the general public that provides the tremendous amount of money for that research.

You are a scientist - a member of international bodies and committees in your own country. You are also a historian. How do you bridge this gap?

Okay. I don't consider myself a historian; I am really a scientist with interest in history. To be a historian is a different profession. But I have been interested in the process of discovery. How does discovery happen? I think that we are rediscovering a lot of things about scientific research. So, although it is impossible to teach how to make a discovery, we can still learn from stories - how other people have made discoveries. About twelve years ago, I initiated a course at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, which was called 'Great discoveries in the twentieth century'. The university authorities accepted this as a course for credit, and I started this course with about eight students. Eight, nine, ten, it was building up slowly and I was enjoying it because it could have a lot of discussion, personal interaction. Later, this became a big course because many students became very much interested in this. Getting this course for future engineers and scientists might be very useful. Sometime in the future they would be doing their work and suddenly they would remember - a particular situation might remind them of a situation they had heard in this course, and what they'd learned might become very instructive.

Serendipity.....

Serendipity is very important but you must have the ability to recognize serendipity. Sometimes serendipity happens and it goes by without your noticing it. As Louis Pasteur said, chance favors the prepared mind, so you must have a prepared mind, and this was what my course was designated for - to help prepare our minds for those serendipities.

Would you like to give a message to the young scientists at NCBS?

When I started my research in Budapest, I selected a topic, and I also looked at the international environment. I knew that I had to a lot of catching up to do, and I had to introduce new things. I had to work very hard, and it was a great challenge. So for quite a few years, I became narrowly focused - I was interested only in my specialty. I was reading journal articles and paid less attention to monographs because I thought that by the time the results found their way into a monograph, they had already become a little obsolete. It was only after a few decades that my interests started broadening again again. My message would be: try to keep your eyes open from the very beginning because it is very useful to learn from other techniques, other fields, and other people - because very often discoveries happen at the borderlines between fields. In particular, I was uninterested in biology, and lately I have become interested in it due to my interviewing program with famous scientists, among them biomedical scientists. I recorded interviews with hundreds of scientists - more than one hundred Nobel laureates included, and I learned a lot from them, including about the biomedical sciences. You asked me for a message, and my advice would be, keep your eyes open.

Aniket Sengupta and Istvan Hargittai at NCBS.