- Person
- Leo Szilard
- Lived
- 1898–1964
- Field
- Nuclear physics
- From
- Hungarian-American
The story
Leo Szilard is best known as the physicist who conceived the nuclear chain reaction, but after the Second World War he turned to biology. In 1946 he secured a research professorship at the University of Chicago that allowed him to work in biology and the social sciences. He saw biology as a field that had not been explored as deeply as physics and was ready for breakthroughs, and he had been drawn to it as early as 1933.
With the chemist Aaron Novick he invented the chemostat, a device for growing bacteria at a steady, controlled rate, and discovered feedback inhibition, one of the ways cells regulate their chemistry. That experience of growing and measuring living cells made him a valuable adviser to other biologists.
One of them was Theodore Puck, a Chicago-trained biophysicist who had studied under the Nobel laureate James Franck and in 1948 had founded the department of biophysics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Puck and his colleague Philip Marcus set out to grow colonies of human cells starting from single cells, a technique known as single-cell plating or cloning.
In 1955 Puck and Marcus succeeded in cloning a HeLa cell, achieving the first cloning of a human cell. According to the two researchers, Szilard gave essential advice that made the achievement a reality.
Their method allowed the genetics of human and other mammalian cells to be studied in detail, and it helped found the field of somatic cell genetics. Puck's team went on to confirm that humans have 46 chromosomes rather than the 48 long assumed, and developed the Chinese hamster ovary, or CHO, cell line. CHO cells later became one of the most productive systems for manufacturing therapeutic proteins, used to make hundreds of drugs. Puck received the Lasker Award for basic medical research in 1958.
Szilard continued to bridge physics and biology for the rest of his life. He helped create the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, where he became a resident fellow in 1964, shortly before his death.
Why it matters
Single-cell cloning became a basic method of human genetics and biotechnology, including the cell lines used to manufacture many modern medicines.
About Leo Szilard
Physicist who conceived the nuclear chain reaction in 1933, drafted Einstein’s letter to Roosevelt, co-built the first reactor, then campaigned for the rest of his life against nuclear war.
More about Leo Szilard
- Leo Szilard saw the chain reaction, and rescued scholarsWaiting at a London traffic light in September 1933, Leo Szilard conceived the nuclear chain reaction; that same year he helped found a group that found posts for 2,500 refugee scholars.
- Szilard found a way to make medical isotopesIn 1934 at St Bartholomew's Hospital, Leo Szilard and Thomas Chalmers discovered the Szilard–Chalmers effect, widely used to prepare medical isotopes.
- Szilard co-invented the chemostat for growing microbesAfter the war Leo Szilard and Aaron Novick invented the chemostat for growing microbes and discovered feedback inhibition, a key way cells control their chemistry.
- Szilard first proposed the cyclotron and electron microscopeLeo Szilard filed the earliest known patent applications for the electron microscope (1928) and the cyclotron (1929), and one for the linear accelerator (1928).
- Szilard and Einstein invented a silent refrigeratorBetween 1926 and 1930 Leo Szilard worked with Albert Einstein on a refrigerator with no moving parts, patented in the United States in 1930.
- Leo Szilard linked information and thermodynamicsIn his Berlin research of the 1920s, Leo Szilard showed a deep connection between information and entropy, making him a founding figure of information theory.
- Szilard petitioned Truman not to bomb without warningIn July 1945 Leo Szilard drafted a petition, signed by about 70 Manhattan Project scientists, urging President Truman not to use the atomic bomb on Japan without warning.
- Szilard fought for civilian control of the atomAfter the war Leo Szilard lobbied for changes to the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 that placed American nuclear energy under civilian rather than military control.
- Leo Szilard helped rescue 2,500 refugee scholarsIn 1933 Leo Szilard helped found the Academic Assistance Council in Britain, which by 1939 had found places for more than 2,500 refugee scholars.
Sources
- Leo Szilard Wikipedia
- Leo Szilard Atomic Heritage Foundation / National Museum of Nuclear Science & History
- Theodore Puck Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.