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50 Cents Leo Szilard T H t HUMAN IS~ N 0. 3 MAY-JUNE 1960 50 CENTS LEO SZILARD PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN HUMANIST ASSOCIATION LEO SZILARD: HUMANIST OF THE YEAR RETRACING THE LIBERAL TRADITION Edwin T. Buehrer THE REDISCOVERY OF MIND Joseph H. Rush AN OBJECTIVE BASIS FOR ETHICS Alfred E. Kuenzli EXISTENTIALISM AND THE HUMANIST'S CHOICE John King-Farlow ALSO: Harry Elmer Barnes Corliss Lamont Dorothy Elfin Flax Samuel Paul Etu John M. Morris The American Humanist Association THE OFFICERS AND BoARD oF DIRECTORS PRESIDENT-George E. Axtellc:; VIcE PRESIDENTs-Harold R. Rafton, Stuart C. Dodd, John W. Hardebeck; SECRETARY-Charles B. English; TREASURER-W. Boyd Alex­ ander; ExEcUTIVE DIRECTOR-Edwin H. Wilson. BoARD oF DIRECTORs-Peter Cromie, James F. Hornback, Leo F. Koch, Vashti McCollum, Mary S. Morain, Hermann J. Muller, Robert G. Risk, Herbert T. Rosenfeld, Gerald Wendt. The American Humanist Association publishes The Humanist and its membership Bulletin, Free Mind, both bimonthly but in alternate months. It conducts its educa­ tional activities through annual national meetings, meetings of committees, of the Board of Directors, and through local Chapters, conferences and Humanist study groups. The national committees and their chairmen are as follows: Church and State-James M. Hutchinson; World Humanism-Mary Morain; Human S-ights and Welfare-LeRay Bowman; Public Education-Joe R. Burnett; Humanist Students-Leo H. Koch; Group Programs and Intergroup Co-operation-Jerry Chambers. Executive-George E. Axtelle; Finance-Charles B. English; Building-W. Boyd Alexander; Publications-George E. Axtelle; Special Publications-Edwin H. Wilson; Nominating-Alfred E. Smith; Resolutions-Ernest Morgan. Annual dues, including subscriptions to the two publications, arc:: General Member­ ship, $5 or more; Contributing Membership, $10 or more:; Supporting Membership, $25 or more; Sustaining Membership, $50 or more:; Sponsor, $roo or more. Information on the Association, subscriptions, membership and local chapters may be obtained from the office of the: American Humanist Association: P.O. Box 227, YELLOW SPlliNGs, 0Hro THE HUMANIST THE BoARD oF EDITORS Harry Elmer Barnes Sir Julian Huxley Chauncey D. Leake John M. Morris Winfred Overholser Mark Starr Editor: Gerald Wendt Managing Editor: Johanna Lamm Literary-Editor:c:-r:Iewellyn Jones Business Manager: Edwin H. Wilson Contributing Editors: Paul Blanshard, Joe R. Burnett, Miriam Allen deFord, Maxine Greene, E. C. Vanderlaan, Maurice B. Visscher. The Humanist is published bimonthly, in February, April, June, August, October and December. Copyright rg6o by the American Humanist Association. Entered as second.dass mail at the Post Office in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Distributor to news­ stands and book stores: Selected Outlets, 102 Beverly Rd., Bloomfield, N.J. Annual Subscriptions: $3.00. Single Copies: 50 cents. r THE HUMANIST VoLUME 20, No.3 ARTICLES All Men Are B1'0thers: Life and LEo SziLARD: H uMAN IST OF Thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi THE YEAR . 130 Llewellyn Jones . r8r RETRAC ING THE LIBERAL TRADITION Ernest G. Schachtel: Metamorpho­ Edwin T. Buehrer . 133 sis: On the Development of Af­ THE REDISCOVERY OF MIND fect, Perception, Attention, and Joseph H. Rush . 143 Memory AN OBJECTIVE BASIS FOR ETHICS Llewellyn Jones . 182 Alfred E. Kuenzli . 154 Tensions Ou1· Child1'en Live With: ExiSTENTIALISM AND THE Stories for Discussions HuMANisT's CHoicE Vern L. Bullough . r83 John King-Farlow r6r John M. Morris . r67 John Betjeman's Collected Poems Llewellyn Jones . 183 POEMS Laile E. Bartless: Bright Galaxy: Ten Y em·s of Unitarian WHALES Fellowships Marden Dahlstedt 153 Llewellyn Jones . r84 WHo Now STILL KNows ... Dorothy Ellin Flax . 167 Theodor Reik: Mystery on the THE GoLDEN BouGH Mountain: The Drama of the Florence Becker Lennon 176 Sinai Revelation Llewellyn Jones . r 86 NEWS AND COMMENTS John M. Dorsey and Walter H. Seegers: Living Consciously: PAUL BLANSHARD's CoLUMN .. r68 The Science of Self HuMANISM ARoUND THE WoRLD Llewellyn Jones . r87 Samuel Paul Etu . 171 H uMAN ISM IN AcnoN Vardis Fisher: Orphans in Gethsemane Harry Elmer Barnes 1 73 E. Nelson Hayes r88 Miriam Allen deFord 1 75 PERTINENT pAPERBACKS 188 THE LITERATURE OF HUMANISM RECENT MAGAZINE ARTICLES . rgo THE END OF THE BooK OF JoB Archibald MacLeish . I77 Horace M. Kallen: ·study of CoMMENTS BY READERS Liberty Frances Mathews, John K. Corliss Lamont . 179 Strahan, Edwin H. Wilson .. 192 Leo Szilard Hun1anist of the Year Dr. Leo Szilard, Professor of Biophysics at the University of Chicago, was named Humanist of the Year 1960 at the annual meeting of the Ameri­ can Humanist Association in Chicago on February 27th. This annual award to men of distinguished achievement in the cause of humanism has been given to: Anton J. Carlson 1953 Margaret Sanger 1957 Arthur F. Bentley 1954 Oscar Riddle 1958 James Peter W arbasse 1955 Brock Chisholm 1959 C. Judson Herrick 1956 Leo Szilard 196o In presenting the silver plaque for the award, Dr. Theodore Puck of the University of Colorado read the following citation: Leo Szilard, scientist, teacher, and indefatigable worker for peace. His life has been dedicated to the principle that Man's mind can find solu­ tions to problems in any field-the transformation of matter, the nature of life, tl1e organization of human society. His brilliant achievements in many sciences, pure and applied, have opened up new universes of discovery. He has alerted mankind to the necessity to seek new and fresh approaches to the problems of attainment of peace on earth. His dedica­ tion to truth and human welfare, his adventurous and masterful methods of problem solving, and his courage and persistence in the face of difficulties have inspired gifted young men throughout the world to make their lives more meaningful for science and for humanity. The award was accepted for Dr. Szilard by the former president of the American Humanist Association, Dr. Hermann J. Muller, with the follow­ mg response: I am profoundly moved at accepting this award in behalf of my dear friend Leo Szilard, whose grave illness prevents his being with us. It 130 THE HUMANIST would be most presumptuous of me to make any statement for him, but I would say for us that we all feel deeply honored. We are honored at his accepting tllis recognition by us of his incomparable contributions to the advancement of human understanding beyond horizons previously unimagined, of human control over nature, and over the affairs of men themselves. All this, we agree, represents the highest type of humanism in action. For my part, let me add that in thus receiving into our group Leo Szilard who, with his wife, Gertrud Weiss Szilard, is herewith given our honorary membership, we have taken among us one of the truly great men not only of our own time, but of the whole elapsed course of human history. Leo Szilard was born in 1898, in Budapest, Hungary, and obtained the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Physics at the University of Berlin in 1922. There he demonstrated the connection between the Second Law of Thermo­ dynamics on the one hand and the relation of entropy and probability on the other. In 1925, he established the relationship between entropy and "information," subsequently rediscovered by Shannon. Working at St. Bartholomew Hospital in London for a two-month period during his vacation in 1934, he discovered, jointly with a staff member of the hospital, Dr. Chalmers, that when beryllium is exposed to gamma rays of radium, slow neutrons are emitted, which later played an important role in the history of the chain reaction. They also discovered what is now called "Szilard-Chalmers Reaction," which permits the separation of a radio­ isotope from the stable isotope from which it is produced through neutron capture. While in England, Szilard became associated with the Clarendon Lab­ oratory at Oxford, but he was in the United States at the time of the Munich crisis in 1938 and promptly resigned his position at Oxford to remain in the United States. While still in England, he had recognized that a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction might be maintained if an unstable element could be found that would emit two neutrons for each neutron captured, and he had derived the general laws governing such a chain-reacting system. He learned in January 1939 of Otto Hahn's discovery that uranium breaks into two heavy, charged fragments when it captures a neutron. Szilard immediately thought of the possibility that neutrons might be emitted in this process and that a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction might be set up in some system con­ taining uranium. At once, he borrowed $2,000 from personal friends, rented 1960, NUMBER 3 131 a gram of radium and made a radium-beryllium neutron source out of it. On March 3, 1939, he and Walter Zinn at Columbia University demonstrated 'that about two neutrons are emitted in the fission of uranium for each neu­ tron captured in this process. The same discovery was made independently and at about the same time by Anderson and Fermi at Columbia University, as well as by Halban and J oliot in Paris. In July 1939, Szilard recognized that a uranium-graphite system was favorable for a controlled chain reaction. He was aware of the military possibilities inherent in this development and realized also that a world war was impending. Szilard communicated his results and his apprehen­ sions to Albert Einstein, and this resulted in a letter written by Einstein to President Roosevelt, dated August 2, 1939, which was the origin of the later atomic bomb project. Szilard became a member of the Columbia University National Defense Research Staff in 1940, and in January 1942, Fermi and Szilard moved to Chicago to continue their work under contract with the Government in the so-called Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago.
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