{"product_id":"the-martians-of-science-five-physicists-who-changed-the-twentieth-century","title":"The Martians of Science: Five Physicists Who Changed the Twentieth Century","description":"\u003cp\u003eIf 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 Krmn  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.  They were an extraordinary group of talents: 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 Krmn became the first director of NASAs 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.  Istvn 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.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44965261672501,"sku":"ByrdShop_0195178459","price":43.67,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780195178456.jpg?v=1770491250","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-martians-of-science-five-physicists-who-changed-the-twentieth-century","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}