Leó Szilárd

Leó Szilárd (1898 to 1964) was a Hungarian-born American physicist, biologist and inventor who made important discoveries in nuclear physics and the biological sciences. He studied engineering in Budapest and then physics at Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, where his doctoral thesis dealt with Maxwell's demon and the link between thermodynamics and information. He conceived the nuclear chain reaction in 1933 and patented the idea in 1936, drafted the Einstein-Szilard letter that led to the Manhattan Project, and worked on reactor design at the University of Chicago, where he was chief physicist. In biology he discovered feedback inhibition and invented the chemostat. He wrote the 1945 Szilard petition against using the bomb on civilians and later helped found the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.