If 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 K�rm�n, 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. Istv�n Hargittai tells the story of this remarkable group: 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 K�rm�n became the first director of NASA's 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. 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.

Martians of Science: Five Physicists Who Changed the Twentieth Century

Biographies & Memoirs

Hargittai, István

Professionals & Academics

Oxford University Press

The Nobel Prize is by far the highest recognition a scientist may receive and the only one with which the general public is familiar. Its prestige has reached improbable heights. At the same time a lot of myth surrounds the Nobel Prize, and this is compounded by the fact that people tend to view scientists with some bewilderment. This book introduces the process of selection of the laureates, discusses the ingredients for scientific discovery and for getting recognition. It reviews the decisive moments of scientific careers en route to the Nobel Prize, points to characteristic features of the laureates, the importance of mentors and venues in scientific careers and other components of success. It also covers some discoverers and discoveries for whom and for which the Nobel Prize never materialized. Whereas there is no general recipe for receiving the Nobel Prize, there are common features of successful scientific careers. The book reveals some information about the scientists' lives and careers that may guide other scientists in increasing their chances of becoming more effective and better recognized players--although it is not expected to help anyone to receive the Nobel Prize! For the general reader The Road to Stockholm reveals the human face of scientists and the human side of their endeavours. The Nobel Prize has served as inspiration for scientists and the general public for a hundred years: this book discusses its problems and celebrates its triumphs.

The Road to Stockholm: Nobel Prizes, Science, and Scientists

Science & Math

History & Philosophy

The Nobel Prize is by far the highest recognition a scientist may receive and the only one with which the general public is familiar. Its prestige has reached improbable heights. At the same time, a lot of myth surrounds the Nobel Prize, and this is compounded by the fact that people tend to view scientists with some bewilderment. This book introduces the process of selection of the laureates, discusses the ingredients for scientific discovery and for getting recognition. It reviews the decisive moments of scientific careers en route to the Nobel Prize, points to characteristic features of the laureates, the importance of mentors and venues in scientific careers and other components of success. It also covers some discoverers and discoveries for whom and for which the Nobel Prize never materialized.

The Road to Stockholm (Oxford Paperbacks)

Science for Kids

This guidebook introduces the reader to the visible memorabilia of science and scientists in Budapest - statues, busts, plaques, buildings, and other artefacts. According to the Hungarian-American Nobel laureate Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, this metropolis at the crossroads of Europe has a special atmosphere of respect for science. It has been the venue of numerous scientific achievements and the cradle, literally, of many individuals who in Hungary, and even more beyond its borders, became world-renowned contributors to science and culture. Six of the eight chapters of the book cover the Hungarian Nobel laureates, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the university, the medical school, agricultural sciences, and technology and engineering. One chapter is about selected secondary schools from which seven Nobel laureates (Szent-Gyorgyi, de Hevesy, Wigner, Gabor, Harsanyi, Olah, and Kertesz) and the five "Martians of Science" (von Karman, Szilard, Wigner, von Neumann, and Teller) had graduated. The concluding chapter is devoted to scientist martyrs of the Holocaust. A special feature in surveying Hungarian science is the contributions of scientists that left their homeland before their careers blossomed and made their seminal discoveries elsewhere, especially in Great Britain and the United States. The book covers the memorabilia referring to both emigre scientists and those that remained in Hungary. The discussion is informative and entertaining. The coverage is based on the visible memorabilia, which are not necessarily proportional with achievements. Therefore, there is a caveat that one could not compile a history of science relying solely on the presence of the memorabilia.

Budapest Scientific: A Guidebook

HARGITTAI, MAGDOLNA

This book introduces the reader to the visible memorabilia of science and scientists in all the five boroughs of New York City - statues, busts, plaques, buildings, and other artifacts. In addition, it extends to some scientists and institutions currently operating in the city. New York has been known as a world center of commerce, finance, communications, transportation, and culture, but it also is a world center in science. The city is home to renowned universities and research laboratories, a museum of natural history and other museums related to science, a science academy, historical societies, botanical gardens and zoos, libraries, and a Hall of Science as well as a large number of world-renowned scientists. The book pays special attention to the role of this city in welcoming persecuted scientists and letting African-American and women scientists thrive. The book is presented in an informative and entertaining way, dotted with scientific gossip and anecdotes, and can be enjoyed even without the reader's actual presence in the city. Over eight hundred photographs illustrate the book. They may induce the reader to make their own discoveries in New York.

New York Scientific: A Culture of Inquiry, Knowledge, and Learning

Throughout the 1990s and the 2000s, Istvan, Balazs, and Magdolna Hargittai conducted hundreds of interviews with leading scientists in physics, chemistry, materials, and biomedical research. These interviews appeared in a variety of publications, including Chemical Intelligencer, Mathematical Intelligencer, and Chemical Heritage. In four-thousand pages of interviews, the Hargittais had conversations with over a hundred Nobel laureates, along with many other top minds and personalities in various scientific fields.Now, in a single volume, the Hargittais have gathered the best and most notable moments of these interviews, creating a survey of the past, present, and future of science, as told by some of the most influential members of many scientific disciplines. Figures like James D. Watson, Francis Crick, and Glenn T. Seaborg share their thoughts in these pages, in a collection that includes 68 Nobel Laureates. Without exaggeration, their backgrounds come from all over the globe: scientists from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, and Taiwan are featured. These interviews discuss many of the most prominent debates and issues in today's scientific climate. Great Minds is a synthesis of scientific thought, as told by some of the most notable scientists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Great Minds: Reflections of 111 Top Scientists

HARGITTAI, BALAZS

Moscow's Novodevichy Cemetery is the final resting place of some of Russia's most celebrated figures, from Khrushchev and Yeltsin to Anton Chekhov, Sergei Eisenstein, Nikolai Gogol, and Mikhail Bulgakov. Using this famed cemetery as symbolic starting point, Buried Glory profiles a dozen eminent Soviet scientists-nine of whom are buried at Novodevichy-men who illustrate both the glorious heights of Soviet research as well as the eclipse of science since the collapse of the USSR. Drawing on extensive archival research and his own personal memories, renowned chemist Istvan Hargittai bring these figures back to life, placing their remarkable scientific achievements against the tense political backdrop of the Cold War. Among the eminent scientists profiled here are Petr L. Kapitza, one of the most brilliant representatives of the great generation of Soviet physicists, a Nobel-Prize winner who risked his career-and his life-standing up for fellow scientists against Stalin. Yulii B. Khariton, who ran the highly secretive Soviet nuclear weapons laboratory, Arzamas-16, despite being Jewish and despite the fact that his father Boris had been sent to the labor camps. And Andrei D. Sakharov, the "father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb" and a brilliant fighter for human rights, for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize. Along the way, Hargittai shines a light on the harrowing conditions under which these brilliant researchers excelled. Indeed, in the post-war period, Stalin's anti-Semitism and ongoing anti-science measures devastated biology, damaged chemistry, and nearly destroyed physics. The latter was saved only because Stalin realized that without physics and physicists there could be no nuclear weapons. The extraordinary scientific talent nurtured by the Soviet regime belongs almost entirely to the past. Buried Glory is both a fitting tribute to these great scientists and a fascinating account of scientific work behind the Iron Curtain.

Buried Glory: Portraits of Soviet Scientists

Designed for use as a supplement for students in undergraduate courses in inorganic chemistry, this text will also serve as a valuable reference for instructors of general and inorganic chemistry at the undergraduate and graduate levels. This book aims to provide a comprehensive account of the VSEPR model and its applications. The text features up-to-date treatment of the VSEPR model, and includes a comprehensive discussion of the geometry of molecules of elements from all parts of the periodic table including the transition metals. It also discusses the quantum mechanical basis for the VSEPR model.

The Vsepr Model of Molecular Geometry

Gillespie, Ronald J.

Allyn&Bacon

Symmetry through the Eyes of a Chemist

We have been gratified by the warm reception of our book, by reviewers, colleagues, and students alike. Our interest in the subject matter of this book has not decreased since its first appearance; on the contrary. The first and second editions envelop eight other symmetry-related books in the creation of which we have participated: I. Hargittai (ed.), Symmetry: Unifying Human Understanding, Pergamon Press, New York, 1986. I. Hargittai and B. K. Vainshtein (eds.), Crystal Symmetries. Shubnikov Centennial Papers, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1988. M. Hargittai and I. Hargittai, Fedezziikf6l a szimmetri6t! (Discover Sym- try, in Hungarian), Tank6nyvkiad6, Budapest, 1989. I. Hargittai (ed.), Symmetry 2: Unifying Human Understanding, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1989. I. Hargittai (ed.), Quasicrystals, Networks, and Molecules of Fivefold Sym- try, VCH, New York, 1990. I. Hargittai (ed.), Fivefold Symmetry, World Scientific, Singapore, 1992. I. Hargittai and C. A. Pickover (eds.), Spiral Symmetry, World Scientific, Singapore, 1992. I. Hargittai and M. Hargittai, Symmetry: A Unifying Concept, Shelter Publi- tions, Bolinas, California, 1994. We have also pursued our molecular structure research, and some books have appeared related to these activities: vi Preface to the Second Edition I. Hargittai and M. Hargittai (eds.), Stereochemical Applications of Gas-Phase Electron Diffraction, Parts A and B, VCH, New York, 1988. R. Gillespie and I. Hargittai, VSEPR Model of Molecular Geometry, Allyn and Bacon, Boston, 1991. A. Domenicano and I. Hargittai (eds.), Accurate Molecular Structures, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992.

Biological Sciences

Springer

The new edition of this widely praised work presents an entirely revised text and new illustrative material covering the latest developments in the field of chemistry.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hargittai, István. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Hargittai, István

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hargittai, István. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Martians of Science: Five Physicists Who Changed the Twentieth Century

The Road to Stockholm: Nobel Prizes, Science, and Scientists

The Road to Stockholm (Oxford Paperbacks)

Budapest Scientific: A Guidebook

New York Scientific: A Culture of Inquiry, Knowledge, and Learning

Great Minds: Reflections of 111 Top Scientists

Buried Glory: Portraits of Soviet Scientists

The Vsepr Model of Molecular Geometry

Symmetry through the Eyes of a Chemist

Symmetry through the Eyes of a Chemist