Wisdom of the Martians of Science PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Wisdom of the Martians of Science PDF full book. Access full book title Wisdom of the Martians of Science by Istvan E. T. Al HARGITTAI. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Istvan E. T. Al HARGITTAI
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9814723827
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Get Book
Book Description
"Wisdom of the Martians of Science refers to five scientists whose brilliance contributed to shaping the modern world. John von Neumann was a pioneer of the modern computer; Theodore von Kármán was the scientist behind the US Air Force; Leo Szilard initiated the development of nuclear weapons; the Nobel laureate Eugene P Wigner was the world's first nuclear engineer; and Edward Teller was the father of the hydrogen bomb. They were born and raised in Budapest, were forced out of Hungary and then from Germany, they became Americans, and devoted themselves to the defense of the United States and the Free World. They contributed significant discoveries to fundamental science ranging from the properties of materials to the application of the symmetry principle in physics, to creating information theory, to game theory. The areas in which we can learn about their wisdom include applications of science to past, present and future real-world needs; defense; education; environment; human nature; humor; politics; religion; weather modification, and others. This book shows the wisdom of the Martians by presenting their thoughts and ideas in their own words and placing them into context. Their wisdom is intriguing, witty, provocative and thought provoking. It extended over many aspects of life and culture that impinge on our existence. While we cannot always agree with what they say, they are never boring. The power of their words and their philosophies will inspire the readers to pursue their own dreams."--
Author: Istvan E. T. Al HARGITTAI
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9814723827
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Get Book
Book Description
"Wisdom of the Martians of Science refers to five scientists whose brilliance contributed to shaping the modern world. John von Neumann was a pioneer of the modern computer; Theodore von Kármán was the scientist behind the US Air Force; Leo Szilard initiated the development of nuclear weapons; the Nobel laureate Eugene P Wigner was the world's first nuclear engineer; and Edward Teller was the father of the hydrogen bomb. They were born and raised in Budapest, were forced out of Hungary and then from Germany, they became Americans, and devoted themselves to the defense of the United States and the Free World. They contributed significant discoveries to fundamental science ranging from the properties of materials to the application of the symmetry principle in physics, to creating information theory, to game theory. The areas in which we can learn about their wisdom include applications of science to past, present and future real-world needs; defense; education; environment; human nature; humor; politics; religion; weather modification, and others. This book shows the wisdom of the Martians by presenting their thoughts and ideas in their own words and placing them into context. Their wisdom is intriguing, witty, provocative and thought provoking. It extended over many aspects of life and culture that impinge on our existence. While we cannot always agree with what they say, they are never boring. The power of their words and their philosophies will inspire the readers to pursue their own dreams."--
Author: Istvan Hargittai
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195178459
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 371
Get Book
Book Description
The Martians is the engaging story of five little-known Hungarian physicists who transformed 20th century science. They emigrated to the United States from Hungary in the 1930's, and were important contributors to such importants experiments as the Manhattan Project. Variously recognized with the National Medal for Science, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Nobel Prize for physics, these five remained close friends throughout their lives. Through decades of political and social upheaval, they held onto their Hungarian identities and were fiervely opinionated and politically active, reactionaries against the fascism and anti-Semitism with which they had grown up. Based on the author's personal relationships with the subjects and many interviews with their contemporaries, The Martians is an exhaustively researched, fascinating story of an important era in American, Hungarian, and scientific history.
Author: István Hargittai
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198769873
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 327
Get Book
Book Description
This book introduces the reader to the visible memorabilia of science and scientists in all the five boroughs of New York City - statues, busts, plaques, buildings, and other artifacts. In addition, it extends to some scientists and institutions currently operating in the city. New York has been known as a world center of commerce, finance, communications, transportation, and culture, but it also is a world center in science. The city is home to renowned universities and research laboratories, a museum of natural history and other museums related to science, a science academy, historical societies, botanical gardens and zoos, libraries, and a Hall of Science as well as a large number of world-renowned scientists. The book pays special attention to the role of this city in welcoming persecuted scientists and letting African-American and women scientists thrive. The book is presented in an informative and entertaining way, dotted with scientific gossip and anecdotes, and can be enjoyed even without the reader's actual presence in the city. Over eight hundred photographs illustrate the book. They may induce the reader to make their own discoveries in New York.
Author: Istvan Hargittai
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030623335
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 291
Get Book
Book Description
This book introduces the reader to the statues, busts, and memorial plaques of scientists, explorers, medicine men and women, and inventors found in the bustling capital of the United Kingdom, London. The former capital of the British Empire, London remains a world center of trade, navigation, finance and many more. It is also a hub of science, the seat of the Royal Society, Royal Institution, Science Museum, British Museum, Natural History Museum, and of great institutions of higher education. The historical figures depicted in these memorials are responsible for creating great institutions, milestone discoveries, contributions to the scientific and technological revolutions, fighting against epidemics, advancing medicine, and contributing to the progress seen during the past four hundred years. This is a guidebook for the visitor and the Londoner alike. It presents memorials that everybody is familiar with and others that the authors discovered during their years of painstaking research. The 750 images and the text, interlarded with anecdotes, is both informative and entertaining.
Author: Hargittai Magdolna
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9811203466
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 404
Get Book
Book Description
Moscow is the center of science and higher education of Russia and is also an international hub of science. There have been milestone achievements of science in Russia (and the Soviet Union), especially in the areas of physics, chemistry, mathematics, the conquest of space, various technologies and medicine. However, the scientists and inventors often created in isolation and have become less known than their discoveries would justify. At the same time, there is no other city in the world that has so many memorials honoring scientists as Moscow. There is a caveat in that political considerations have often influenced who was remembered and who was not. This book presents statues, memorial plaques, and historical buildings. Not only celebrated excellences are mentioned, but also some of the greats that perished during the years of terror. The book is full of human drama and 750 photos illustrate the narrative. Science in Moscow follows Budapest Scientific and New York Scientific and is the third in the series about memorials of scientists in great cities of the world.
Author: István Hargittai
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030347664
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 175
Get Book
Book Description
In this book, István Hargittai, an internationally renowned physical chemist, narrates his life by introducing over forty personalities that played noteworthy roles in his career. The time span ranges from the Holocaust, which the author survived, through the periods of hard and softer dictatorships of Soviet-type socialism, and the current revival of an autocratic regime in Hungary. He overcame barriers to get a high school, then a university education. He received excellent training in Moscow and was active at Hungarian, American and other international scientific venues, and he has interacted with more Nobel laureates than anyone in the world. The chapters feature such famous contributors to world science as Francis Crick, Richard L. Garwin, Ronald J. Gillespie, Avram Hershko, George Klein, Paul Lauterbur and Peter Mansfield, Peter D. Lax, Paul Nurse, Yuval Ne’eman, George A. Olah, Guy Ourisson, Michael Polanyi, Andrei D. Sakharov, Albert Szent-Györgyi, Edward Teller, James D. Watson, and Eugene P. Wigner. The areas covered include chemistry, molecular biology, physics, materials science, and mathematics. “On the basis of Hargittai’s mosaic of his personal and scientific life, I could compose two further patterns. One would be the history of the twentieth century and the other the science history of the same time period.” From the Foreword by the late philosopher Agnes Heller, Goethe Medalist, Wallenberg Medalist, and Hannah Arendt Prize laureate
Author: István Hargittai
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633867401
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 440
Get Book
Book Description
By addressing the enigma of the exceptional success of Hungarian emigrant scientists and telling their life stories, Brilliance in Exile combines scholarly analysis with fascinating portrayals of uncommon personalities. István and Balazs Hargittai discuss the conditions that led to five different waves of emigration of scientists from the early twentieth century to the present. Although these exodes were driven by a broad variety of personal motivations, the attraction of an open society with inclusiveness, tolerance, and – needless to say – better circumstances for working and living, was the chief force drawing them abroad. While emigration from East to West is a general phenomenon, this book explains why and how the emigration of Hungarian scientists is distinctive. The high number of Nobel Prizes among this group is only one indicator. Multicultural tolerance, a quickly emerging, considerably Jewish, urban middle class, and a very effective secondary school system were positive legacies of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Multiple generations, shaped by these conditions, suffered from the increasingly exclusionist, intolerant, antisemitic, and economically stagnating environment, and chose to go elsewhere. “I would rather have roots than wings, but if I cannot have roots, I shall use wings," explained Leo Szilard, one of the fathers of the Atom Bomb.
Author: F Bródy
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9814500682
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 760
Get Book
Book Description
After three decades since the first nearly complete edition of John von Neumann's papers, this book is a valuable selection of those papers and excerpts of his books that are most characteristic of his activity, and reveal that of his continuous influence. The results receiving the 1994 Nobel Prizes in economy deeply rooted in Neumann's game theory are only minor traces of his exceptionally broad spectrum of creativity and stimulation. The book is organized by the specific subjects-quantum mechanics, ergodic theory, operator algebra, hydrodynamics, economics, computers, science and society. In addition, one paper which was written in German will be translated and published in English for the first time. The sections are introduced by short explanatory notes with an emphasis on recent developments based on von Neumann's contributions. An overall picture is provided by Ulam's, one of his most intimate partners in thinking, 1958 memorial lecture. Facsimilae and translations of some of his personal letters and a newly completed bibliography based on von Neumann's own careful compilation are added. Contents:Quantum Mechanics:Mathematical Foundations of Quantum MechanicsThe Logic of Quantum Mechanics (with G Birkhoff)Ergodic Theory:Proof of the Quasi-Ergodic HypothesisOperator Methods in Classical Mechanics, II (with P R Halmos)Operator Algebra:Algebra of Functional Operations and Theory of Normal OperatorsOn Rings of Operators I–IVUse of Variational Methods in HydrodynamicsEconomics:Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (with O Morgenstern)Computers:On the Principles of Large Scale Computing Machines (with H H Goldstine)Science and Society:The MathematicianMethod in the Physical SciencesThe Role of Mathematics in the Sciences and in Societyand other papers Readership: Mathematicians. keywords:Mathematics;Science History;Computer Science;J V Neumann;Science and Society;Game Theory;Quantum Mechanics;Operator Algebra;Hydrodynamics;Ergodic Theory“The collection bears testimony to the lasting influence of John von Neumann's work on the course of modern mathematics.”R Siegmund-Schultze Mathematical Abstracts “This collection is a fascinating introduction to the work of John von Neumann … it has much to offer even to the casual browser and will also be relevant and interesting to those working today in the fields on which von Neumann had such enormous influence.”Mathematical Reviews
Author: Istvan Hargittai
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199884412
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 376
Get Book
Book Description
If science has the equivalent of a Bloomsbury group, it is the five men born at the turn of the twentieth century in Budapest: Theodore von K?rm?n, Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, John von Neumann, and Edward Teller. From Hungary to Germany to the United States, they remained friends and continued to work together and influence each other throughout their lives. As a result, their work was integral to some of the most important scientific and political developments of the twentieth century. Istv?n Hargittai tells the story of this remarkable group: Wigner won a Nobel Prize in theoretical physics; Szilard was the first to see that a chain reaction based on neutrons was possible, initiated the Manhattan Project, but left physics to try to restrict nuclear arms; von Neumann could solve difficult problems in his head and developed the modern computer for more complex problems; von K?rm?n became the first director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, providing the scientific basis for the U.S. Air Force; and Teller was the father of the hydrogen bomb, whose name is now synonymous with the controversial "Star Wars" initiative of the 1980s. Each was fiercely opinionated, politically active, and fought against all forms of totalitarianism. Hargittai, as a young Hungarian physical chemist, was able to get to know some of these great men in their later years, and the depth of information and human interest in The Martians of Science is the result of his personal relationships with the subjects, their families, and their contemporaries.
Author: István Hargittai
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 963386609X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 162
Get Book
Book Description
André Goodfriend was Deputy Chief of Mission from 2013 to 2015 at the US Embassy in Budapest. In the absence of an ambassador, most of the time he was Chargé d’Affaires. Goodfriend represented his country, and for that matter, liberal democracy, in the early period of the increasingly autocratic Orbán regime. This tenure was distinguished by an unusually high public visibility and broad-based popularity. This book contains the distilled essence of conversations recorded in the fall of 2015 and in the years after his departure. Aside from Goodfriend’s reflections on his personal history, the main focus of the deliberations is on open government: its characteristics, preconditions, benefits, and its relation to modern diplomacy. The mindset of a democracy-rooted diplomat with a working experience in an increasingly autocratic regime lends a particular perspective to the topics discussed. These topics include the fight against corruption, the protection of civil society, crisis prevention, education, economy, international relations, applied humanities, and the use of the social and traditional media to achieve policy goals. This book presents modern, “people-friendly” diplomacy in an era in which public officials are increasingly expected to be transparent and engaged.
