THE MARTIANS' VISION OF THE FUTURE

By George Marx (1927-2002)
George Marx, Professor at the Department of Atomic Physics, Eötvös University, Budapest, a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA), played an important role in particle physics, in theoretical astrophysics and also in bioastronomy. An eminent teacher, Prof. Marx lectured and was a regular guest professor at major universities world-wide. His book, „The Voice of Martians” was first published in 1993; second edition Hungarian Academy Press, Budapest (1997). This paper is essentially a chapter from the last quoted book.

It is well known that it was the U.S., and soon thereafter the Soviet Union, England, France, and China, where nuclear power was accomplished. In addition, a number of highly talented physicists of other nations contributed to the success, e.g. Germans (Hans Bethe, Felix Bloch, Otto Hahn, Rudolf Peierls), Austrians (Otto Robert Frisch, Hans Halban, Lise Meitner, Victor Weisskopf), Italians (Eduardo Amaldi, Enrico Fermi, Bruno Pontecorvo, Emilio Segré). Teller used to emphasize: - It was the work of many people. - Why are just Hungarian scientists considered to be, in some sense, "aliens"?¹

The birth of a legend

- Enrico Fermi was a man with outstanding talents, he had many interests outside his own particular field. He was credited with asking famous questions. There are long preambles to Fermi's questions like this:

- The universe is vast, containing myriads of stars, many of them not unlike our Sun. Many of these stars are likely to have planets circling around them. A fair fraction of these planets will have liquid water on their surface and a gaseous atmosphere. The energy pouring down from a star will cause the synthesis of organic compounds, turning the ocean into a thin, warm soup. These chemicals will join each other to produce a self-reproducing system. The simplest living things will multiply, evolve by natural selection and become more complicated till eventually active, thinking creatures will emerge. Civilization, science, and technology will follow. Then, yearning for fresh worlds, they will travel to neighboring planets, and later to planets of nearby stars. Eventually they should spread out all over the Galaxy. These highly exceptional and talented people could hardly overlook such a beautiful place as our Earth. - "And so, " - Fermi came to his overwhelming question, - "if all this has been happening, they should have arrived here by now, so where are they ? " - It was Leo Szilard, a man with an impish sense of humor, who supplied the perfect reply to Fermi's rethoric: - "They are among us," - he said, - "but they call themselves Hungarians. "

This is Francis Crick's version of the myth.² - A saying circulated among us that two intelligent species live on Earth: Humans and Hungarians - as Isaac Asimov recalled. Hans Bethe wondered quite "seriously" whether a brain like von Neumann's does not indicate a species superior to that of man.³ - Richard Rhodes⁴ has reported: - At Princeton a saying gained currency that Neumann, the youngest member of the new Institute for Advanced Studies, twenty-nine in 1933, was indeed a demigod but that he had made a thorough, detailed study of human beings and could imitate them perfectly. - The myth of the Martian origin of the Hungarian scientists who entered world history on American soil during World War II probably originated in Los Alamos. Leon Lederman, director of the Fermilab, reported possible hidden intentions⁵: - The production of scientists and mathematicians in the early 20th century was so prolific that many otherwise calm observers believe Budapest was settled by Martians in a plan to infiltrate and take over the planet Earth. - (See Kovács' map in this volume, p.45.) As a matter of fact, these suspicious Hungarians - Theodore von Kármán, John von Neumann, Leo Szilard - enjoyed the myth. Edward Teller became especially happy of his E.T. initials, but he complained about indiscretion, - Von Kármán must have been talking. Yankee magazine [March 1980] reported this landing in detail:

- Gabor, von Kármán, Kemeny, von Neumann, Szilard, Teller, and Wigner were born in the same quarter of Budapest. No wonder the scientists in Los Alamos accepted the idea that well over one thousand years ago a Martian spaceship crashlanded somewhere in the center of Europe. There are three firm proofs of the extraterrestrial origins of the Hungarians: they like to wander about (like gypsies radiating out from the same region). They speak an exceptionally simple and logical language which has not the slightest connection with the language of their neighbors. And they are so much smarter than the terrestrials. (In a slight Martian accent John G. Kemeny added an explanation, namely, that it is so much easier to learn reading and writing in Hungarian than in English or French, that Hungarian kids have much more time left to study mathematics.)

Valentine Telegdi recalled his youth [talk in Budapest 1989]: - For a young Hungarian abroad it may be good to hide his Hungarian descent, because if it is made known, too much will be expected of him. People will know that he is one of the Martians of exceptionally high intelligence who use that incomprehensible language. There was another profession besides science which was crowded by Hungarian talents, the cinema, - an art born from the marriage of traditional drama and modern technology.

Landing in Hollywood

- Legend has it that Hollywood was founded by Hungarians. (At least in part.)⁶ - Sándor Korda was born in Hungary, in the fateful year 1919 he emigrated to Germany, from there to Hollywood, but reached the peak of his career in England (The Private Life of Henry VIII and Lady Hamilton), and became Sir Alexander Korda. The names of Hungarians in Hollywood make a long list, from Adolph Zukor - born in Ricse (Paramount Pictures) to William Fox - born in Tolcsva, near Tokaj (20th Century Fox) as founders; from Michael Curtiz - born in Budapest (Casablanca and The Adventures of Robin Hood) to Andy Vajna - born in Budapest (Rambo and Evita) as directors; from Menyhard Lengyel ( Typhoon and Ninotshka) to Joe Esterhas - born in Csákánydoroszló (Flashdance and Basic Instinct, working now on a script about the 1956 revolt of Hungary) as screenwriters; from Laszlo Kovacs - born in Budapest (Easy Riders and Free Willy) to Willy Zigmond (Close Encounter of the Third Kind and The Dear Hunter) as cinematographers; from Bela Lugosi - born in Lugos (Frankenstein and Dracula) to Zsa Zsa Gabor - born in Budapest (Moulin Rouge and A Nightmare on Elm Street) as actors, and so on. A special attraction to atoms has been shown by Ciccolina - born as Ilona Staller in Budapest (in her Orgia Atomica). There is also a list of second generation Hungarian actors like Tony Curtis - fluent in Hungarian (stylishly the Lobster Man from Mars and The Boston Strangler who Likes it Hot) through Paul Newman ( The Sting, then Exodus, followed by a Long Hot Summer) up to Leslie Howard - born László Steiner (A Free Soul, later The Scarlet Pimpernel, to be Captured! and then Gone with the Wind). (Howard was wounded in World War I; while flying an airplane near Gibraltar on a secret mission in World War II he was shot down in action, according to myth at the direct order of Hitler. ) Hungarians have been laureated by Oscar Awards: George Cukor (director), József Rufusz (cartoon director), Vilmos Zsigmond (cinematographer), Adolph Zukor (for life's work). On the wall of Zukor's office there was an inscription:

TO BE A HUNGARIAN IS NOT ENOUGH.

In a low voice Adolph added: - But it may help. - Non-Hungarians in Hollywood used to say, - If you have a Hungarian friend, you don't need an enemy. - According to Norman Macrae, the biographer of John von Neumann,

- The American word "movie" probably derived from the Hungarian "mozi. " Cynics says that Hungarians created America's Hollywood before other Hungarians less destructively created America's A-bomb.

István Szabó (1938-), the Oscar winner Hungarian director, recently made a film for the BBC about the capital city of Hungary. - I called this film "Staying Afloat" because to me Budapest is like a boat trying not to capsize as it is buffeted by waves from all directions. We've been lashed by history and we mustn't let it suck us under. The very air of Budapest exudes this daily struggle for survival, this feeling that we're clinging to the rails; this is why I love my city.

Coming from outer space

There is only one single factual piece of evidence about the descent from planet Mars: there is a mount named Von Kármán Crater on the Red Planet. Hungarians left more traces on the Moon: a huge ring in the southern part of the far side of the Moon has also been named Von Kármán Crater, honoring the pioneer of supersonic flight. East of it is the tiny crater honoring Imre Izsák, the Hungarian-American expert of celestial mechanics of the Space Age (1929-1965). In the North-West, near the lunar Terminator Line, halfway between H.G. Wells and F. Joliot is the great Szilard Crater of 122 km in diameter. East of it astronauts may find the Von Neumann Crater. Further l9th century Hungarians, who did not cross the Ocean, also deserved place on the Lunar Map: in the southern part of the far side are János Bolyai (pioneer of non-Euclidean geometry, 1802-1880); a bit east of it is Roland Eötvös. A tiny crater represents Gyula Fényi, the Jesuit solar astronomer (1845-1927), another one the Austro-Hungarian Nobel laureate, Richard Zsigmondy. But there is a Martian who proved that the craters on the Moon are not products of lunar volcanism but had been created by impacts of meteors from outside: Egon Orowan, while working on plasticity and fractures in solids, studied high resolution photographs brought back by the Apollo missions.⁷ (There is indeed an asteroid named Teller orbiting around the Sun, discovered by E.F. Helin in 1989.)

Speaking an alien tongue

An obvious explanation of the myth of the Martians may be their strange language: its grammar and vocabulary are quite distinct from those of the Indo-European languages. Kármán and Bárány proudly accented the á in their names at all times, in spite of the opposition of computerized word processors. (The Báránys did so through generations.) When polyglott Valentine Telegdi decided to learn Japanese, he rushed to Budapest to buy a Japanese language book written in Hungarian, because Hungarian grammar is similar to Japanese, while for an English author it is difficult to explain how Japanese think and speak. (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans put family name first, given name as last; in Europe only the Hungarian language follows this rule.)

According to myth, at a top secret meeting of the Manhattan Project General Groves left for the gents' room. Szilard then said: - Perhaps we may now continue in Hungarian! - Hungarian emigrees enjoyed speaking their mother tongue whenever a chance offered itself. This has made them look suspicious. Los Alamos was a place of top security. General Groves was annoyed that Neumann and Wigner had frequent telephone conversations in Hungarian. [Teller, talk in Budapest 1991.] The "thick Hungarian accent" was often heard even in the corridors of the Pentagon. (The Lugosi accent made the alien power of Dracula, the count from the faraway Transylvania even more realistic. )

This explanation of the myth, however, is certainly not sufficient. Let us quote now George Békésy:

- If a person traveling outside Hungary is recognized as a Hungarian due to his accent, something which - beyond a certain age - is impossible to drop, the question is asked almost in every case: "How is it possible that a country as small as Hungary has given the world so many internationally renown scientists?" There are Hungarians who have tried to give an answer. For my part: I cannot find an answer, but I would mention one thing. When I lived in Switzerland, everything was peaceful, quiet and secure; we had no problems earning a living. In Hungary, life was different, and we all were involved in an ongoing struggle for almost everything which we wanted, although this struggle never caused anybody's perdition. Sometimes we won; sometimes we lost; but we always survived. It did not bring an end to things, not in my case anyway. People need such challenges, and these have existed throughout the history of Hungary.

Crossroads in space-time

It is a fact of history that the great figures of human culture are not distributed evenly in space and time. They concentrated, for example, in democratic Athens (Aristotle and Sophocles), while the city was fighting against Persian invasions; in renaissance Florence (Michelangelo and Galileo), in a city struggling with the supremacy of the Pope; at the dawn of the English industrial revolution (Shakespeare and Newton), while fighting the Spanish Armada. Quiet periods require only social adjustment. Under a changing climate, however, old schemes no longer work, such conditions encourage creative individuals. If a very different final truth is offered each month, young people learn critical thinking, and become more interested in facts than in axioms. During the recent political turmoil a joke circulated: - What is the most unpredictable thing today in Hungary? The past! - Psychology teaches us that an impact-rich environment cultivates talent. To support this view, let's quote one of the strangest Martians, Arthur Koestler⁸:

- When Tom Corbett, Space Cadett, behaves on the Third Planet of Orion exactly in the same way as he does in a drugstore in Minnesota, one is tempted to ask him: "Was your journey really necessary?"

There may be historical reasons for this alien coherence of the Hungarians: - Hungary was usually in turmoil; a situation attributable mainly to an accident of geography.⁹ - As Kati Marton (Mrs Holbrook), who left Hungary as a child in 1957, said,

^l0

- My parents had too much history. - My thesis is that Hungary (together with her Central-European neighbors) has been at the crossroads of history, where the routes from Rome (Catholicism), Germany (Reformation), Russia (Eastern Orthodox Christianity), Osman Empire (Islam) met each other, presenting alternatives and igniting conflicts. Armies from East and West were marching on the roads through centuries. We have learned agriculture from the Slavs, the Renaissance arrived from Italy, and industry came from Germany. Through one and a half centuries the armies of the Osman Empire took everything what they could from the Hungarian peasants - but pigs; this is why pork is the favorite meat of the Hungarians till today. Grapes were introduced by the veterans of the Roman legions, in oder to make wine. Beer-brewing came from Germany. The Russians have shown how to distill vodka. And the Turks introduced the strong black coffee, a present national drink of the Hungarians. So much about the first Hungarian millenium.

A hundred years ago (when the Martian heroes of this book were born), a German-speaking Emperor-King ruled Hungary, supported by feudal landlords. But the industrial revolution was already in full swing, having brought the parliamentary system, compulsory education (1868) - and unsolved social contradictions. In 1896 politicians in Parliament spoke of the glory of the past thousand years of Hungarian history, but the world exposition, organized in Budapest to honor the millenium, presented new physical inventions and the first underground metro system on the continent was already operational in Budapest (second only to London).

As the 20th century arrived, the Austro-Hungarian Empire started playing the superpower: Turkey was expelled from most of the Balkan Peninsula. Austria-Hungary occupied Bosnia (1908), pushing Serbia toward an alliance with Russia. After a Serbian nationalist murdered the Habsburg crown-prince in Sarajevo (1914), war was declared against Serbia. Russia rushed to help the Serbs, Germany responded by attacking Russia, France and England declared war against Germany. Thus World War I was started, and was lost. After the military collapse Michael Károlyi, the liberal Count rose against the Austrian emperor and created a pro-Western democratic Hungarian Republic (31 October 1918). But with the encouragement of the Western Powers the neighboring countries attacked Hungary. Károlyi resigned, and a communist government organized resistance - looking for help from Moscow (21 March 1919). Their defense efforts could not last for long: Budapest was invaded by foreign troops (July 1919). Finally a group of Hungarian army officers assembled and took power (November 1919), made the country formally a kingdom again (but the military rulers expelled the Habsburg king trying to return). The rightist military rule took revenge. A wave of emigration began.

Almost all the Martians attended university and began their careers in Germany, where and when quantum mechanics had been born. This does not contradict but confirms our thesis that conflicts cultivate creativity. The 1920s were the decade of the Weimar Republic, which was full of psychological conflicts: the democracy was overshadowed by the lost World War ("Dolchstoss von hinten" ), the dream of a new German Empire (das Dritte Reich), the trilemma of liberalism-communism-nazism. This fruitful period of the coexistence of contradicting ideologies lasted there over ten years, before terminating in the tragedies of the economic crisis, dictatorship, and war.

The most sensitive period in human life is being a teenager, when one's personal system of values is built up. The diagram indicates that the Martians - so successful in later years across the Ocean - attended high schools in Hungary just at the time of the great World Wars (figure). What a privilegized time to live in!

When were the Martians teenagers?