A little group of scientists, who played important roles in the early history of nuclear arms was called the Martians. The name came from an old joke and referred to the strange rationality of these scientists, supposedly originating from their native country, which was not exactly on Mars rather in Hungary. This group included four people: Leo Szilárd, the discoverer of nuclear chain reaction in 1934, Eugene Wigner, Nobel Laureate theoretical physicist, John von Neumann, the great mathematician, an inventor of computers, Edward Teller, the famous theoretical physicist, and they were joined by the somewhat older Theodore von Kármán, a great expert in aeronautics.
On the example of this little group a most important and widely discussed problem of science and technology studies will shortly be examined here, namely, some ideas concerning the social responsibility of scientists and science. Moral issues of science often come up, e.g., when people trained in science inject poisonous gas into the airing system of the Tokyo subway or when biologists clone a lamb, not to mention environmental issues. The archetype of moral problems in science, however, is related to the military usage. This issue has been discussed with a particular intensity since the second World War or since dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The basic question is whether science and technology and their creators are responsible for the unfortunate consequences or all responsibility should be placed on greedy businessmen and power thirsty politicians. Two typical answers exist to this question. The first one is the passivist approach, saying that scientists and engineers, or science and technology, produce knowledge and machines. The usage of their products is none of their business, as it falls outside their competence. The second is the activist approach which says that scientists and engineers are responsible also for the application of their results, because their knowledge, puts them, unlike laypeople, into the position to understand many predictable consequences of their results.
But on what basis can a scientist choose between these two options? Can the choice be based on purely rational arguments or is it a result of some earlier experience of life or something else? I will look for replies to these questions on the example of the Martians' activity during the hot and cold war. We will see that even their answers showed substantial differences, depending on the historical context in which four periods can be distinguished.

At the beginning, from early 1939 till 1942, Szilárd, Wigner and Teller shared the same position. Szilárd, the most active member of the group, convinced Einstein in 1939 to write a letter to President Roosevelt, and this letter became the actual starting point of the Manhattan project. It was drafted by Szilárd, with the help of both Wigner and Teller in absolute consent. Actually, they desperately fought for setting up the nuclear bomb project so that to prevent Hitler from having it first. Von Neumann, Wigner's old friend from their high school years in Budapest, at the beginning was not involved in the work, as he was engaged in other projects, when nuclear research was considered a privileged subject of physicists. Kármán, at the same time, worked on the first American missile project and on the technological development of the US Air Force.
Up till succeeding in producing the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in Chicago in 1942, which proved that Szilárd's idea was right and nuclear energy can in fact be exploited, no important disagreement occurred between the Martians. Szilárd and Wigner played active, principal parts in building up the pile, and Teller also participated in the research work in Chicago. At that point, however, their routes parted, though first not very seriously.
In the second period, when the task was to design and build the bomb, only Teller moved to the Los Alamos laboratory opened in 1943, the other Martians not. Von Kármán moved from Pasadena to Washington, D.C. and worked for the Pentagon as a US Air Force General. Undoubtedly, Wigner's role was also very important as the head of a group which designed the first nuclear reactor in history in Hanford, Washington, but it was slightly away from the center of the action taking place in Los Alamos. His task was to produce plutonium, the fissionable material. Von Neumann became active at that point. As a consultant mathematician, he regularly showed up in Los Alamos for solving mathematical problems, particularly concerning implosion, a method of detonating the bomb, in which he could rely on his former investigations related to shock waves. The vast amount of computation to be done for the design of the bomb turned his interest toward the newly born computers. Szilárd, on the other hand was gradually removed from the events by General Leslie Groves, the head of the Manhattan Project, because Groves found Szilárd a disreputable civilian, who does not fit into his team and who is unreliable even from political point of view. This was already a visible point of departure of the Martians for different directions.
The most dramatic differences in the behavior of the Martians became apparent in the third period: when the bomb was about ready, and the decision was to be made about its usage. The Martians represented all the logically possible attitudes.
Szilárd exerted active resistance against bombing any Japanese city. When he understood that his original idea, to apply nuclear energy for practical purposes was doubtlessly feasible, and his hated and feared political enemy, Hitler and Nazism have been defeated, Szilárd did not see any reason to continue the bomb development project and even less to drop the bomb. By Spring, 1945, he got agitated of worry for the tragedy the atomic bomb could cause for the masses who would be killed and for the whole mankind, which gains an extremely dangerous lethal weapon without having any principles to control it. In Szilárd's opinion the bomb must not be used against Japan, only a demonstration should be made. For avoiding the tragedy, he took three steps: 1. He drafted another letter signed by Einstein to be sent to President Roosevelt, who died just before the delivery; 2. he played a main role in drafting the Franck Report, a document to protest against dropping the bomb in Japan instead of demonstration, but the military authorities classified it before circulation; and finally, on 17th July, he wrote a petition in the same tone to the newly elected President Truman in the matter. Though it was signed by 67 Chicago scientists and an amended version by another 85 scientists, it failed to be effective.
Wigner's position could be called passive disagreement. In his memoirs he said "Like most of my colleagues, I did not expect the bomb to be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With Hitler decisively defeated, I wanted to see our leaders consult an international panel before using the bomb." As he never agreed with dropping the bombs, Wigner signed the Szilárd petition, but he did not organize any action and later showed some sympathy with the behavior of the military leadership concerning its decision.
If Szilárd's version was active resistance, Teller's behavior then might be called deferential. In a letter to Szilárd, Teller reported that he completely agreed with the content of the petition, but as a good soldier obeyed his boss', Oppenheimer command, who in a hypocritical way, advised him to take the passivist stand, not sign the petition, while, as it later became clear, he himself voted for deploying the bomb in Japan. This way Teller kept silent with always recurring remorse.
Far right from Szilárd we can find von Neumann, who could be considered an active supporter. He made the calculations about the optimum height of the bomb's blast where it could exert the greatest effect. In addition, he participated in selecting Hiroshima as a proper target. He did not participate in political discussions and, in a somewhat misleading way, behaved like a typical person of passivist attitude, which in fact, was not more than keeping a low profile as Steve Heims explained. Contrasted with Szilárd, von Neumann got along very well with General Groves, and gradually, he became a most important specialist in the field.
The attitudes of the four Martians changed only slightly in the fourth period, during the cold war. Von Neumann's role in the further development of the nuclear armament became more emphatic. He supported Teller's favorite idea, which seemed almost an obsession: the "super," the hydrogen bomb, which was taken seriously only after the first Soviet nuclear test in September 1949. But even before that von Neumann was thinking about a possible preemptive strike or a very strong nuclear buildup to deter the Soviets. He used his computers for the calculations of improving the atomic bomb and developing the hydrogen bomb. In fact, Teller is considered "the father of the hydrogen bomb," though Stanislaw Ulam, a Polish origin mathematician also played an outstanding role in its development. Teller later got the reputation of the most radical anti-Soviet weapon builder, something like a symbol of the devil in science. Von Neumann, whose political views did not differ from those of Teller, soon became a member of the Atom Energy Commission, the most important US government agency in developing nuclear arms.
Wigner, who never concealed his right wing political feelings, which he shared with his friends von Neumann and Teller, became the director of the research work for improving nuclear technology in Clinton Laboratories, Oak Ridge, then he worked as a supporter and researcher of the not widely publicized civil defence against a possible Soviet nuclear strike. Simultaneously, their older friend, von Kármán was appointed to a high position in the newly established NATO in Europe.
Szilárd, however, never stopped working on nuclear disarmament. As a scientist, he changed from physics to biology but institutionally he remained as baseless in science as in politics. Still, he exerted an enormous activity in arms control. Among other things, he wrote letters to Stalin and Khrushchev in the hope to mediate between the nuclear powers, organized famous movements for superpower nuclear cooperation, like the one called Council for a Livable World or became important part of Pugwash movement. Unlike his fellow Martians, he thought that the Soviets were not evil but rational people and it is worth discussing with them. Till his early death in 1964, Szilárd never stopped fighting for limiting of nuclear arms.

From this story, we can conclude that all the Martians had activist attitudes to social responsibility of science. There was no difference between them in that sense. But were they right? They entered the field of military research when they saw that Hitler's regime made up a lethal danger to civilization. This seemed perfectly clear to them who immigrated to the USA from Germany and who, being of Jewish origin, belonged to those whom Hitler sent to gas chambers. In the first period, they all agreed that Nazi Germany should be defeated under any circumstances. This was their common ground in the first period.
Later, however, even before the end of the war, their behavior was influenced by their relationship with the Soviet Union, and three of them, Teller, von Neumann and Wigner, considered Stalin as dangerous an enemy as Hitler was, while Szilárd did not. This difference of judgment made a great impact not only upon their activities but also upon the process of the nuclear armament. Their ideas on maximum versus minimum deterrence, or preemptive strike versus negotiation, fast local nuclear war versus peaceful cooperation were widely discussed during the cold war, in a very dangerous period of political history.
Finally, we can ask about the factors that formed the extremism of the Martians. Were there some viruses on Mars which infected these most gifted people? I would say, yes. It was Hungarian history which they experienced themselves in their youth or through their relatives and friends who stayed behind. This history included the happy days and the collapse of Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the first World War, revolutions, an early Communist Soviet Republic in 1919, loss of two-thirds of the country after the War, which closed the doors even for the exceptionally gifted people, then a right wing regime with recurrent waves of anti-Semitism. As all this happened in ten, fifteen years, which would be more than enough for several generations, they, as many other people, having the same experience became insecure and intolerant, irrespective to their scientific excellence.

So, in general, is it enough to understand that in some historical situations scientists must not behave as cool specialists but they should take their knowledge as real power? I guess, it is not. Yet, how could scientists tell better than anyone else whether one kind of usage of some inventions is more favorable than an other one? It does not seem justified to suppose that a person with a special gift in science can necessarily use this ability in politics, where results are measured by elections and not by publications. The activist attitude presupposes the Platonic philosophical optimism that scientific rationalism can solve all kinds of problems. But precisely the story of the Martians show us that this presupposition can lead both to human and inhuman solutions.
In conclusion, I would say that the Martians' enemies in hot and cold wars were not nations, not races or religions but totalitarian political systems which murdered millions of people. Their intransigent active attitudes originated from their personal commitments.

Created: 25. November 1998 by Pluhár Emese