Excerpt:
Welcome to the world of physicist, biophysicist, and "scientist of conscience" Leo Szilard (1898-1964). How do you say it? Say SIL-ahrd.
Szilard's ideas included the linear accelerator, cyclotron, electron microscope, and nuclear chain reaction. Equally important was his insistence that scientists accept moral responsibility for the consequences of their work.
In his classic 1929 paper on Maxwell's Demon, Szilard identified the unit or "bit" of information. The World Wide Web that you now travel, and the computers that make it possible, show the importance of his long-unappreciated idea.
Annotation:
This site is dedicated to the life and work of Leo Szilard, a European physicist who contributed to the development of the atomic bomb, but protested its use. The site focuses on Szilard's role in advocating arms control. The opening page is basic in design, with a couple of images, a small amount of text, and a list of links. A visitor must follow these links to find the bulk of the information. The site contains images, transcriptions of interviews and speeches, audio clips, a short bibliography, a biographical timeline, and links to external sources of information. Perhaps the most useful of these external links take a browser to the online index to the Leo Szilard papers housed at the University of California, San Diego.