- Person
- Leo Szilard
- Lived
- 1898–1964
- Field
- Nuclear physics
- From
- Hungarian-American
The story
In the 1920s home refrigerators often used toxic gases, and leaking seals in their pumps could poison whole families. Albert Einstein and the young Leo Szilard, his former student, were moved by newspaper reports of a Berlin family killed when a seal in their refrigerator failed and leaked toxic fumes into their home. They set out to design something safer.
Their reasoning was simple: a device with no moving parts would have no seals to fail. From 1926 the two physicists worked together on refrigeration designs that used only a heat source and the physical behaviour of gases and liquids to move heat. Their best-known model was an absorption refrigerator that operated at constant pressure and used three working fluids, water, ammonia and butane, building on an earlier three-fluid design by the Swedish engineers Baltzar von Platen and Carl Munters.
Einstein, who had worked in the Swiss Patent Office, used his experience to help secure the patents. Their United States application, filed in December 1927 and based on a German application of December 1926, was granted on 11 November 1930 as US patent 1,781,541, in the names of both men. In all they were granted 45 patents in six countries for three different models. Some historians believe Szilard did most of the inventing, while others credit Einstein with real design work.
The Einstein refrigerator was never mass-produced. It was less efficient than existing machines, the Great Depression dried up funding, and the arrival of the safer refrigerant Freon made it less attractive. The Swedish company Electrolux bought some of the most promising patents. One variant used an electromagnetic pump, and that Einstein–Szilard pump was later used to cool breeder reactors, where its reliability and safety mattered.
Interest in the idea has returned. In 2008 engineers at the University of Oxford revived the design as a possible refrigerator for rural areas without electricity. The project showed two great theoretical minds applying physics to an everyday safety problem, and it remains a striking example of their friendship and inventiveness.
Why it matters
The collaboration showed how fundamental physics could be turned toward safer, simpler everyday technology, and its ideas still inspire designs for places without electricity.
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
- Szilard's advice helped clone the first human cellLeo Szilard gave essential advice that, according to Theodore Puck and Philip Marcus, made their 1955 cloning of a human cell a reality.
- 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).
- 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
- Einstein refrigerator 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.