Name: Why So Many Great Scientists Come From Hungary
Uploaded: 2024-07-04T07:08:48.000Z
Duration: 8 min 53 s
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Many of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project were from Europe, leading them to be humorously nicknamed the Martians due to their foreign accents.

And an overwhelming number of these scientists were from Hungary.

Part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1918, Hungary had a similar population size to the Austrian part of the empire.

Yet Hungary produced a remarkable number of scientists in the 20th century.

While Germany was a scientific powerhouse with advanced research centers, Hungary produced nearly the same number of prolific scientists, despite having only one-third of its population.

A big reason can be attributed to Hungary's genius factories, great schools that prepared students for university.

One notable example is the Minta Gymnasium, founded by Mora von Kármán, who reformed the Hungarian school system to emphasize problem-solving over rote learning.

His son, the mathematician Theodor von Kármán recalled,

At no time did we memorize rules from the book.

Instead, we sought to develop them ourselves.

Teachers at Minta emphasized inductive reasoning, deriving general rules from specific examples.

For example, students might measure the sides of various right-angled triangles and observe the consistent relationship between the lengths, leading them to independently discover that a squared plus b squared equals c squared.

The Minta Gymnasium produced many outstanding scientists, including physical chemist Michael

Polanyi and physicists Edward Teller and Leo Szilárd.

The Minta's model was so successful that the Lutheran school adopted it.

John von Neumann, who developed the modern computer, game theory, and helped build the bomb was a famous alumnus.

I recently produced a video about him that I've linked in my description.

His legendary high school math teacher, Laszlo Ratz, was an actual mathematician, not simply an educator with theoretical knowledge.

Ratz was so impressed by von Neumann that he arranged for him to have tutoring sessions with university math professors.

It was common in Hungary for prominent mathematicians and scientists to take on mentorship roles.

Von Neumann benefited from the minds of three great mentors who introduced him to advanced mathematical concepts while he was still a teen.

Laszlo Ratz also greatly influenced another Lutheran student, Eugene Wigner.

When Wigner won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his many contributions to nuclear physics, he credited his high school math teacher in his speech, explaining that Ratz evoked in me a sense of the beauty of his subject.

Ratz's impact was so profound that Wigner kept a photo of him in his office.

A street in Budapest is named in Ratz's honor, reflecting the deep respect and lasting legacy of Hungary's educators.

This kind of mentorship extended beyond high school.

When completing his PhD, Wigner was grateful to be taken under the wing by Michael Polanyi.

Polanyi advised Wigner's doctoral dissertation and gave him a place at his laboratory at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin.

Wigner wrote fondly about Polanyi's mentorship in his autobiography.

Polanyi took an interest in all of his assistants, but I felt that he liked me especially.

Polanyi even loaned me a bit of money when I needed it.

But his finest gift was to encourage my work in physics, and this he did with all of his very great heart.

In all my life, I've never known anyone who used encouragement as skillfully as Polanyi.

Jewish students like Wigner often gravitated toward careers in physics and mathematics.

Fields where students were judged based on their ability alone, at a time when antisemitism ran rampant throughout Europe.

Jews in the Russian Empire faced brutal pogroms that threatened their lives.

This postcard shows pogromists celebrating the murder of Jews with shots of vodka.

In Germany, antisemitism was on the rise even before the Nazi era, with Jews often being blamed for economic and political issues, limiting their prospects.

This pressure created a heightened sense of urgency among Jews in Europe to succeed.

As John von Neumann noted, there was a feeling of extreme insecurity in the individuals and the necessity to produce the unusual or face extinction.

He's saying that fear drove Jews to strive to be extraordinary in order to ensure their survival.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire was more inclusive than other European regions.

Emperor Franz Joseph granted Jews equal rights, declaring,

Jews were elevated to the highest echelons of society.

John von Neumann's father Max, a successful banker and lawyer, became an economic advisor to the Hungarian government.

The emperor's reign was marked by an unprecedented peaceful period in Hungary, during which the arts, literature, and sciences flourished.

However, Hungarian Jews were well aware that their fortunes could turn.

The good times ended soon after the death of Franz Joseph in 1916.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed after World War I, creating a power vacuum that fueled a surge of nationalism in Hungary.

Riding this wave, Hungary's wartime leader, Admiral Miklós Horthy, seized power in 1920, establishing a right-wing regime that discriminated against the Jewish population.

Many families of the scientists converted to Christianity to avoid discrimination.

Young, ambitious, bright Jewish students no longer had a future in Hungary or in many other parts of Europe.

Germany was the leading nation in scientific research at the time, but Hitler's policy of purging the nation's universities and institutions of Jewish scientists led to its decline.

Meanwhile, America welcomed these brilliant scientists with open arms and fat wallets.

Princeton University offered Eugene Wigner more than seven times what he earned in Berlin.

Leo Szilard fled Germany in March 1933, reportedly the day before the borders closed.

Research led him to conclude, if you want to succeed in this world, you don't have to be much cleverer than other people.

Szilard conceived the nuclear chain reaction, theorizing that certain elements, when bombarded with neutrons, could produce more neutrons, leading to a self-sustaining chain reaction.

When the highly unstable uranium-235 nucleus is struck by a neutron, it becomes uranium-236.

This newly formed nucleus is so unstable that it splits into two smaller atoms, such as krypton and barium.

In the process, more neutrons are released, which strike more U-235s, causing a chain reaction and a massive explosion.

Szilard confided to fellow Hungarian physicist Edward Teller, you know what fission means.

The famous letter that Albert Einstein sent to President Roosevelt, warning of Germany's potential to develop an atomic bomb, was actually written with the help of Szilard.

The letter warned of the danger of nuclear fission.

This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable, though much less certain, that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed.

Einstein signed the letter because he was the most famous scientist in America, ensuring that President Roosevelt would take the warning seriously.

This letter was crucial in prompting the Americans to launch the Manhattan Project, to develop the bomb before Germany could.

The deadliest weapon known to humankind was built, in large part, by a group of Hungarian

They were brilliant thinkers who attended prestigious schools, immigrated to America, collaborated closely, and had an extraordinary impact on the 20th century.

It's clear that strong education played a crucial role in Hungary's success in producing brilliant scientists.

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