Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, The Man Behind the Bomb

New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1992. Reprint. Second printing. Hardcover. Very good/very good. xix, [1], 587, [1] pages. Illustrations. Chronology. Notes. Selected Bibliography. Index. A detailed but highly accessible account of the life and work of the great scientist (1898-1964) associated both with the development of nuclear power and, later, with its control based on some 200 interviews, exclusive family records and photos, archival research, and more than 300 personal letters from Szilard to his wife that were discovered in 1987. Lanouette's (senior energy policy analyst, US GAO) collaborator, Bela Szilard, is Leo Szilard's brother. William Lanouette is a writer and public policy analyst who has written about the politics of nuclear weapons and nuclear power for more than three decades, in The Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, Scientific American, and other publications. He was Washington Correspondent for The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and is author of Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, The Man Behind the Bomb (Charles Scribner's Sons 1992, University of Chicago Press 1994). From 1991 to 2006, Lanouette was a Senior Analyst for energy and science issues at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. Foreword by Jonas Salk. Leo Szilard (February 11, 1898 May 30, 1964) was a Hungarian-born American physicist and inventor. He conceived the nuclear chain reaction in 1933, patented the idea of a nuclear reactor with Enrico Fermi, and in late 1939 wrote the letter for Albert Einstein's signature that resulted in the Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb. He also conceived the electron microscope, the linear accelerator and the cyclotron. Szilard conceived of the idea of nuclear chain reaction using recently discovered neutrons. The following year he filed for a patent on the concept of the neutron-induced nuclear chain reaction. Szilard also was the co-holder, with Nobel Laureate Enrico Fermi, of the patent on the nuclear reactor (U.S. Patent 2, 708, 656). Szilard was directly responsible for the creation of the Manhattan Project. He drafted a confidential letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt explaining the possibility of nuclear weapons and encouraging the development of a program which could create them.