Talk:Russell Square

Video of fountain

I could have just put a picture up, but a picture of a fountain is nothing compared to actually watching it burble away - David Gerard (talk) 20:36, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Nuclear fission first envisioned

One of the most consequential pieces of scientific history converged here. Ashutosh Jogaleskar writes in an excerpt from his Scientific American blog,

"It was 1933. Adolf Hitler had come to power in January, The Depression was raging and the future looked bleak to many. On the morning of September 12, 1933, on a miserable, wet, quintessentially English autumn day, at the intersection where Russell Square meets Southampton Row, [the Hungarian physicist] Leó Szilárd waited irritably at a traffic light waiting for it to change from red to green. He had just attended a lecture by the great English physicist Ernest Rutherford. Rutherford, known to many as the father of nuclear physics, was discussing the newly prophesied release of energy from atoms, most notably by science-fiction pioneer H G Wells in his book The World Set Free. In his baritone voice, Rutherford, acknowledged master of the atomic domain, dismissed this fanciful idea as nonsense. Any thought of releasing the energy locked in atoms, he said, was 'moonshine'.

"Szilárd was irritated by this flippant repudiation. Accomplished as he was, how could even the great Lord Rutherford know what the future held in store? Szilárd had himself thought deeply about nuclear matters before, most often during his extended morning bathtub ablutions in expensive hotels. Now waiting for the light to change, Szilárd pondered Rutherford's words...

"'In London, where Southampton Row passes Russell Square, across from the British Museum in Bloomsbury, Leo Szilard waited irritably one gray Depression morning for the stoplight to change. A trace of rain had fallen during the night; Tuesday, September 12, 1933, dawned cool, humid and dull. Drizzling rain would begin again in early afternoon. When Szilard told the story later he never mentioned his destination that morning. He may have had none; he often walked to think. In any case another destination intervened. The stoplight changed to green. Szilard stepped off the curb. As he crossed the street time cracked open before him and he saw a way to the future, death into the world and all our woes, the shape of things to come...'

"Time cracked open indeed. What Szilard realised as he stepped off that curb was that if we found an element that when bombarded by one neutron would release two neutrons, it could lead to a chain reaction that could possibly release vast amounts of energy. Leo Szilárd had discovered the nuclear chain reaction long before anyone else, six years before the discovery of nuclear fission and any inkling that anyone could have had about the release of atomic energy, let alone the woeful apocalyptic future that would await the world because of its release."

Books referenced by the blog: 1. Rhodes, Richard: The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986), Simon and Schuster. 2. Lanouette, William, Szilard, Bela: Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, the Man Behind the Bomb (1994), University of Chicago Press.

<ref>Ashutosh Jogalekar. 2013. "Leó Szilárd, a traffic light and a slice of nuclear history." February 12. The Curious Wavefunction: Musings on chemistry and the history and philosophy of science <https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/leo-szilard-a-traffic-light-and-a-slice-of-nuclear-history/<ref> Stephen Mikesell Singing Coyote (talk 19:18, 24 April 2021 (UTC)