This inconspicuous country has produced the most outstanding group of people in the history of science

Among the winners of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, there is one scientist of Hungarian descent each. And there are more than a dozen Nobel Prize winners in Hungarian history - could this place be the breeding ground for some kind of scientific genius? In the 1930s and 1940s, a group of Hungarian Jews immigrated to the United States, and eventually their achievements shone through the history of human science and technology, and were well-known. They were all born in Budapest, had similar childhoods, spoke unusual languages, and were particularly intelligent in mathematics and physics. They did not seem to be from Earth, so they were nicknamed "Martians." This article introduces the commonalities of these Martians. In addition to understanding their experiences, it also hopes to inspire thinking - why do geniuses always appear in groups?

By Jørgen Veisdal

Translation | Jiawei

Preface

The "Budapest Martians", sometimes shortened to "Martians", is a nickname used to describe a group of Hungarian-born physicists and mathematicians who immigrated to the United States in 1933 after the Great Purge. From an American perspective, the term refers to a group of intellectually gifted people who came to the United States from an obscure country, spoke an incomprehensible foreign language, and spoke English with a strong accent (later made famous by actor Bela Lugosi in the film Dracula). Famous scientists generally considered to belong to this group include refugees from the University of Göttingen, early members of the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, and participants in the Manhattan Project, including:

John von Neumann (1903-1957, Hungarian: Neumann János Lajos). This versatile genius is generally regarded as "the last great mathematician who has mastered many fields". He was an early professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and a member of the Manhattan Project; (Editor's note: See "John von Neumann: Unparalleled Genius (Part 1); John von Neumann: Unparalleled Genius (Part 2)")

Paul Erdős (1913-1996, Hungarian: Erdős Pál), an eccentric, wandering mathematician sometimes called "the most prolific mathematician in history";

Eugene Wigner (1902-1995, Hungarian: Wigner Jenő Pál), winner of the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physics, is widely regarded for his contributions to nuclear theory;

Leó Szilárd (1898-1964, Hungarian: Szilárd Leó), a former engineer who proposed the concept of nuclear chain reaction in 1933, and wrote the famous letter to US President Roosevelt with Einstein in 1939 (known as the "Einstein-Szilard Letter"). It is said that this letter led to the subsequent Manhattan Project;

Edward Teller (1908-2003, Hungarian: Teller Ede), generally known as the "Father of the Hydrogen Bomb", an early member of the Manhattan Project; (Editor's note: For a discussion of who is the "Father of the Hydrogen Bomb" between Teller and Ulam, see "About Chaos, What Did Ulam, the Father of the Hydrogen Bomb, Do?")

Theodore von Kármán (1881-1963, Hungarian: Kármán Tódor), a famous aerospace engineer, is recognized as "the most outstanding aerodynamic theorist of the 20th century"; (Editor's note: See "A Scientific Genius Dancing in the Wind - Commemorating the 60th Anniversary of von Kármán's Death" and "The Revelation of von Kármán's Growth: Why Can He Become a Scientific Genius Once in a Century?")

John Hersányi (1920-2000, Hungarian: Harsányi János Károly), winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics, made important contributions to the early field of incomplete information games;

John Hersányi (1926-1992, Hungarian: Kemény János György), Einstein's assistant at the IAS and later Richard Feynman's assistant on the Manhattan Project, invented the early programming language BASIC;

Paul Halmos (1916-2006, Hungarian: Halmos Pál), von Neumann's assistant at the IAS, made fundamental contributions to logic, probability theory, statistics, operator theory, ergodic theory, and functional analysis;

George Pólya (1887-1985), a leading mathematician who made fundamental contributions to combinatorics, number theory, numerical analysis, and probability theory;

Although the ten Budapest Martians pursued different scientific interests (ranging from nuclear fission and aerodynamics to game theory and set theory), they shared common ancestors, similar childhoods, cognitive abilities, and similar educational and career paths.

Front row from left: von Neumann, Erdös, Wigner, Teller; bottom row from left: Szilard, von Karman, Halmos, Polya, Kemeny

Characteristics of Martians—Jewish ancestry but not Jewish

In fact, the most striking Martian feature may be that they are all European and of Jewish descent. Hungarian Jews trace their roots back to (at least) the medieval Kingdom of Hungary. By the time of World War I, Hungarian Jews were well integrated into Hungarian society, making up 5% of the national population and 23% of the population of the capital, Budapest. Jews were particularly prominent in the sciences, arts, and business. In 1913, more than 30% of the students at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics were Jewish.

But the Martians' parents had different beliefs about Judaism. Von Neumann's parents were not Jewish, nor were Wigner, Teller, and Erdös' parents. Teller later wrote about this issue:

"Religion was not an issue in my family. In fact, we never discussed it. The only religious education I received came from the separate religion classes that all students at Minta High School were required to take. My family only celebrated one holiday - Yom Kippur, which we fasted on. My father prayed for his parents on Saturdays and all Jewish holidays."

Although Wigner took classes in Judaism, his family later converted to Lutheranism. Szilard's parents did observe Jewish beliefs. Polya's parents converted to Catholicism before he was born, had him baptized, and raised him in Christian traditions. Harsanyi's parents also converted to Catholicism in 1919. In fact, by 1941, more than 17% of Budapest's Jews had converted to Roman Catholicism.

The secularist tendencies of their parents likely influenced the Martians' own beliefs, as many of them grew up to be agnostics or atheists. Of the aforementioned, Erdős, Wigner, Teller, Szilard, Polya, and von Neumann were all nonbelievers. Von Neumann converted to Catholicism near his death, but his friend Oskar Morgenstern said that von Neumann "had no resonance in his attitudes, views, and thoughts when he was healthy." Harsanyi, who had been a devout Catholic, also lost his religious beliefs in his late twenties. Although Erdős was an "agnostic atheist," he spoke extensively in a 1985 speech about a God-like deity he called the "Supreme Fascist":

"You don't have to believe in God, but you should believe in the 'Book.'"

Translation: The "Book" above is one of Erdös's unique mathematical terms, and is a visualization of his Platonic ideas. He believes that there is a mathematical book that records the most perfect mathematical proofs.

An atypical childhood

Although they were born at different times, with the oldest (von Karman) born in 1881 and the youngest (Kemeny) born in 1926, many Martians described similar experiences growing up in Budapest:

• Parents are well-educated and wealthy

Von Neumann's father was a banker with a doctorate in law, and his mother was an heiress from a wealthy Budapest family. Erdős's parents were both teachers with doctorates in mathematics. Von Karman's father was a famous professor of education with a doctorate in philosophy; his mother came from a prominent Bohemian family. Wigner's father was the director of a tannery. Szilard's father was a civil engineer. Harsanyi's father owned a drugstore. Kemenyi's father was an import-export wholesaler. Halmos's father was a doctor. Polya's father was a lawyer and later a private lecturer (Privatdozent) at the University of Budapest.

• Home education before the age of 10

Before World War II, it was customary in Hungary to educate children at home before the age of 10. Although both of the Martians' parents were professional workers, they all received a good early education at home, with an emphasis on science, language, and literature. Von Neumann was educated by a governess, Erdös was taught by his parents, von Karman studied with his father's former students, and Wigner was taught by a private tutor.

• Parents have unique insights into education

Von Neumann's father insisted that his son learn English, French, German, and Italian in addition to Hungarian. Von Neumann's father would often "tell the family about decisions he made while working at the bank, asking the children how they would respond to particular investment possibilities and balance sheet risks." Although von Karman showed an early talent for mathematics, his father (a professor of education who practiced his research philosophy on his son) insisted that he not learn mathematics, but emphasized geography, history, and literature. Erdős once described himself as learning to read by "reading the books my parents left at home."

• Enter college early and graduate early

Von Neumann entered university at age 18 and received his PhD in mathematics at age 22, while completing his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering at ETH Zurich. Erdös entered university at age 17 and received his PhD at age 21. Halmos received his bachelor's degree in mathematics and philosophy at age 18 and his PhD in mathematics at age 22. Teller received his PhD in physics at age 22. Kemeny received his bachelor's degree in mathematics and philosophy at age 20 (although he took a year off to work under von Neumann and Richard Feynman on the Manhattan Project) and his PhD in mathematics at age 23. Halmos finished high school at age 15 and entered the University of Chicago, receiving his degrees in mathematics and philosophy at age 18 and his PhD at age 22. Pólya received his PhD in mathematics at age 24, Szilard received his PhD in physics at age 24 (while serving in the military for more than a year), and von Kármán received his PhD at age 27. Harsanyi received two doctorates, one in philosophy and sociology in 1947 and one in economics from Stanford University in 1959. He received his first doctorate at the age of 27, but his studies were interrupted by World War II.

In other words, the "Martians" grew up in wealthy families, with highly educated or successful parents who emphasized the value of education and hard work. The European and American school education system enabled them to start their research careers very early - mostly before the age of 25, and von Neumann and Erdős published papers before the age of 18. Someone once summarized that "Martians grew up in the end of Hungary. They benefited from the comfortable environment of wealthy families, the refined atmosphere of Budapest, a largely feudal free capital, and excellent secondary schools." (Balazs, István Hargittai 2016)

Left: Von Neumann at age 7; Right: and Erdős at age 8.

Extraordinary cognitive abilities

Although the Martians were partly the product of circumstance, certainly not every wealthy Hungarian youngster in the early 20th century had the potential to become a first-rate mathematician or physicist. Von Neumann and Erdös are particularly memorable as gifted children. Both showed a talent for mathematics at an early age. Von Neumann could mentally divide eight-digit numbers at the age of six, and young Erdös could calculate in his head how many seconds a person had lived at the age of four. Von Neumann had an extraordinary memory and could recite entire novels from memory at an early age, astonishing his teachers and classmates.

Von Karman was also called a mathematical prodigy by his brothers, and could perform a lot of mental arithmetic at the age of 6. Teller and Halmos also loved numbers at an early age. Although Teller, like Einstein and Feynman, was a late talker, Teller later recalled in an interview that he could calculate large numbers in his head at a very young age and enjoyed it. Similarly, Halmos later recalled:

"In math class, I usually did above average. I would get bored in class and do fun things like taking logarithms of very large numbers for fun."

Although his two older brothers were good at mathematics, Polya later recalled that he preferred biology and literature to mathematics. Ironically, although Polya had excellent grades in high school, his performance in geometry could only be considered "satisfactory."

Excellent secondary schools in Budapest

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there were several famous secondary schools in Budapest (the following is the time when the Martians attended school):

Lutheran High School (Fasori Evangélikus Gimnázium): von Karman (1891-1898), Wigner (1913-1921), von Neumann (1914-1921), Harsanyi (1929-1937);

Minta Gymnázium: Founded in 1872 by von Karman's father, von Karman (1891-1898), Teller (1917-1925, he also studied at Luther Gymnázium);

Real High School (Főreálgimnázium): Szilard (1908-1916);

Berzsenyi Dániel Gimnázium: Polya (1930-1938).

Von Neumann and Wigner attended the same high school, where their mathematics teacher was László Rátz, who founded the famous high school mathematics magazine Középiskolai Matematikai és Fizikai Lapok (KöMaL) in 1893, in which Polya, Harsanyi and Erdös later published articles. Von Karman (mathematics, 1897), Szilard (physics, 1916), Teller (mathematics and physics, 1925) and Harsanyi (mathematics, 1937) all won the prestigious Eötvös Prize, the "Hungarian national award for the best student in mathematics and science".

Kemeny immigrated to the United States at the age of 16 and attended George Washington High School in New York. Halmos immigrated to the United States at the age of 13 and attended high school in Chicago. Although he could not speak English when he first arrived, he graduated at the age of 15 and was admitted as an undergraduate student at the University of Illinois that same year.

Future and career path

Around 1900, "50% of Hungarian lawyers and doctors were of Jewish descent." However, for Jews, "there was no future in politics or the military, so they could only choose business. If a successful businessman wanted his son to receive higher education, he had to send him to study science and engineering."

In fact, von Neumann's father wanted him to follow in his footsteps and go into industry, while von Karman's father wanted his son to study engineering. Harsanyi's father forced him to study chemical engineering. Halmos and Szilard also intended to study chemical engineering when they entered university. Although Szilard excelled in mathematics and physics, he also began his academic career by studying engineering at the Berlin Institute of Technology until he later turned his attention to physics and transferred to Friedrich-Wilhelm University. Halmos also switched to mathematics and physics. In 1920, Szilard's lifelong friend Wigner entered the Budapest University of Technology and Economics to study chemical engineering, but he eventually transferred to the Technical University of Berlin in 1921 to study physics.

Left: University of Budapest (now known as Eötvös Loránd University); Right: Budapest University of Technology and Economics

Lipót Fejér's Hungarian School of Analysis trained many of Hungarian mathematical elites in the early 20th century. During their studies at the University of Budapest, von Neumann, Erdös and Polya were all taught by him.

Harsanyi wanted to study mathematics and philosophy, but his father insisted that he study chemical engineering. In 1939, he entered the University of Lyon, but the outbreak of World War II forced him to return to Hungary. He then studied pharmacology at the University of Budapest, graduating with a degree in 1944. After graduation, he was forced to join a forced labor unit on the Eastern Front and was later deported to a concentration camp in Austria. However, Harsanyi managed to escape and spent the rest of the war in hiding in a Jesuit house. In 1947, he received a doctorate in philosophy and sociology, and in 1959 in economics.

University of Göttingen

University of Göttingen, the school emblem is on the right

Von Karman was the first Martian to go to the University of Göttingen, the "world center of mathematics." He graduated from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics in 1902, and then went to Göttingen to study for a master's degree with Ludwig Prandtl, receiving his doctorate in 1908. From 1912 to 1913, Polya also studied at the University of Göttingen, where he met David Hilbert, Felix Klein, Edmund Landau, Hermann Weyl, and Richard Courant. In 1913, he left the University of Göttingen, and according to his later recollections, he left the University of Göttingen with some notoriety:

"In the train compartment, I had an argument with a young man sitting opposite me because my luggage had fallen. I was too emotional at the time and provoked him. He did not respond to my provocation, so I slapped him. Later I learned that the young man was the son of a Geheimrat and, crucially, he was also a student at the University of Göttingen. After some misunderstandings, the university senate asked me to leave."

In the autumn of 1926, von Neumann went to Göttingen to work on the foundations of mathematical logic under the guidance of Hilbert. Wigner was also invited by Arnold Sommerfeld to serve as Hilbert's assistant. There, Wigner laid the foundation for the symmetry theory of quantum mechanics. Teller, who was a few years younger than von Neumann and Wigner, went to Göttingen in 1930 to work under Max Born.

By the postwar period, after the Great Purge of 1933, the University of Göttingen had lost its status as the "world center of mathematics", so Kemeny, Halmos, and Harsanyi spent their postdoctoral years elsewhere (at the Office of Naval Research, Reed College/Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, and Australian National University/Wayne State University, respectively).

Escape to the United States

"I don't think we are more talented than other students at West, but we know we can't go back. Our talents must be utilized. We don't have the opportunity to waste our gifts."

—Nicholas Kurti

Robert Leonard argues that "what the experience of many Hungarian Jews highlights is that they had been integrated into Hungarian society to some extent since the mid-19th century". However, in the eyes of the conservative nationalists who came to power in Hungary in 1920, Jews were still "horrible aliens". In 1938, Hungary enacted the first anti-Jewish law on personal restrictions (numerus clausus), overturning the equal citizenship status granted to Jews in Hungary in 1867. Inspired by the German Nuremberg Laws, Hungary enacted similar racial laws in 1939 and 1941, explicitly prohibiting Jews from marrying non-Jews and excluding Jews from many professions (including the civil service, i.e. teaching positions and professorships). At the time these laws were enacted, many Martians had already worked for some time in Berlin and Göttingen, and therefore experienced first-hand what it was like for people of Jewish descent to live under right-wing authoritarian rule.

Von Neumann was the first to leave. He had first visited the United States in 1929, with the purpose of teaching the newly developed quantum theory to graduate students at Princeton University, while he was a private lecturer at the University of Hamburg. He was invited back to serve as a visiting professor from 1930 to 1933, when the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (Berufsbeamtengesetz) was first passed, and Jewish faculty members, professors, and graduate students from German universities were expelled. Later, during his confirmation hearings for his appointment to the Atomic Energy Commission in 1955, von Neumann explained his motives for leaving Hungary as follows:

“I must say that the main reasons were partly because the conditions in Hungary were quite inadequate, and I thought that my academic career would have better development space in the United States, and to a considerable extent, I preferred the American system; and finally, because I expected that there would be a Second World War, I was worried that Hungary would stand on the side of the Nazis, and I did not want to die on their side.”

Von Neumann accepted a tenured professorship at the newly established Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton at the age of 30, and would work there until his early death in 1957 at the age of 54. Although he did not join the Manhattan Project, he later contributed to the mathematical modeling of nuclear explosions, particularly the concept and design of the explosive lens required for the plutonium core of "Fat Man."

Von Neumann (left) talks with Feynman (center) and Stanislaw Ulam at Los Alam.

In 1930, von Neumann came to Princeton with his friend Wigner. According to Wigner himself, Princeton University professor Oswald Veblen was encouraged by the school's recommendation:

"... not one person, but at least two people, two people who already knew each other, who didn't suddenly feel like they were put on an island without any close contact with anyone. Of course, Johnny's name was already a household name by then, so they decided to invite Johnny von Neumann. They thought: Who has written a paper with John von Neumann? They found Mr. Wigner. So they sent me a telegram as well."

—Excerpt from Norman Macrae and John von Neumann (1992)

Left: Teller; Center: Wigner; Right: Szilard.

Wigner also spent three years in Berlin and Princeton until 1933. When he was first hired as a one-year lecturer at Princeton University, his salary reportedly increased sevenfold compared to his time in Europe. When his term expired in 1936, Princeton University decided not to renew his employment, so Wigner had to move to the University of Wisconsin. He stayed there for two years, returning to Princeton in 1938 to begin work on the Manhattan Project. Wigner bid farewell to Hungary forever in a letter to Rudolf Ortvay in 1939:

“I felt more and more bitter, I felt more and more alienated from Hungary. … I began to feel that I no longer wanted to convince my former compatriots of anything, and that what happened in Hungary no longer mattered to me.”

He later won the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physics for "his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and elementary particles, especially through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles." He continued to work at Princeton until his death in 1995.

Szilard, a lifelong friend of Wigner, left Germany for England in 1933. He reportedly transferred his savings of about £1,595 from Zurich to London and lived in hotels for more than a year without a job. The following year, he got his first job in England as a physicist at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, studying radioactive isotopes for medical purposes. From 1938 to 1939, he traveled around the United States as a visiting scholar, eventually settling at Columbia University. During the war, he worked at the University of Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory and later helped found the Salk Institute. He died of a heart attack in 1964.

Teller worked for Bohr in Copenhagen until the eve of Hitler's rise to power. In the spring of 1933, he came to Göttingen and soon went to England with the help of the International Rescue Committee, a global humanitarian aid organization founded in 1933 at Einstein's encouragement. In England, Teller was welcomed by University College London, and then he was offered a full professorship at George Washington University, which he accepted in 1935. He worked at the Los Alamos Laboratory on the Manhattan Project and later on the development of the first hydrogen bomb. In 1954, he testified controversially against the safety and credibility of J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Manhattan Project. He died in 2003 at Stanford University, where he had previously been a senior fellow.

Von Karman was concerned about developments in Europe. In 1930, he accepted an offer to direct the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at Caltech. He worked there until 1936, when he founded Aerojet Corporation (now Rocketdyne) with Andrew G. Haley, Frank Malina, and Jack Parsons. During the war, he worked on rocket research for the U.S. military and helped found the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in 1944. He died in 1963 at the age of 82, after U.S. President John F. Kennedy awarded him the first National Medal of Science.

"For his leadership in the basic science and engineering of aeronautics; for his outstanding teaching and related contributions in many areas of mechanics; for his outstanding advisory service to the military; and for his promotion of international cooperation in science and engineering."

After graduating with a PhD in mathematics from the University of Budapest in 1934, Erdős began his lifelong nomadic journey. Erdős traveled from one country to another, working in different institutions while co-authoring mathematical papers. During the war, he found refuge at the Institute for Advanced Studies. He published more than 1,500 academic papers in his lifetime. In 1996, he died of a heart attack while attending a conference in Warsaw. He once described a dramatic scene of his death:

“I want to be lecturing, finishing an important proof on the blackboard, and someone in the audience will shout: ‘How do you generalize it to the general case?’ I will turn to the audience, smile and say: ‘That will be left to the next generation’, and before I finish my words I will fall down.”

In 1940, Polya moved to California to become an emeritus professor at Stanford University. Before immigrating, he had been a professor of mathematics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich since 1914. Stanford University built Polya Hall at 255 Panama Street in his honor. He was still teaching when the construction began, and he complained to his students that the name of the building made people think he was dead. He died in Palo Alto in 1985 at the age of 97.

After completing his second doctorate at Stanford University under Kenneth Arrow, Harsanyi became a professor of economics at Wayne State University in Detroit in 1961. He worked there for more than two years before moving to the University of California, Berkeley in 1964. There, he continued his research in game theory, for which he later won the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics. In 2000, Harsanyi died in Berkeley of a heart attack due to Alzheimer's disease.

Halmos's father left Hungary in 1924 and returned in 1929 to pick him up and his brothers, George and John. Halmos's mother died when he was six months old. After graduating in 1938, he first worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Reed College, and then learned that his friend Warren Ambrose (Kenneth Arrow) had received a fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and he later wrote:

That made me angry. I wanted to go, too! I quit my job, which upset the dean of the department, whom I had never met. I … went to my father and borrowed a thousand dollars … I wrote to Veblen and asked him if I could become a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, even though I had no scholarship. … I moved to Princeton.

After six months at Princeton, Halmos also received a scholarship. In his second year at Princeton, he became von Neumann's assistant. The two co-authored a paper. He taught at Syracuse University, University of Chicago, University of Michigan, University of Hawaii, University of Indiana, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Santa Clara University. He retired in 1985 and died in 2006.

Kemeny's father also went to the United States in 1938 and returned to his home country in 1940 to reunite with his family in the United States. Kemeny studied for a doctorate at Princeton University under the tutelage of Alonzo Church, while also working part-time as Einstein's assistant, and received a doctorate in mathematics in 1949. In 1953, at the age of 27, he was appointed full professor of mathematics at Dartmouth College. In 1964, he invented the programming language BASIC, which was later used by Bill Gates and Paul Allen to create Microsoft. Kemeny died in 1992 at the age of 66.

The Origin of the Term "Martian"

The most popular anecdotes about the Budapest Martians are collected in various works by György Marx. [For example: Marx, G. (1992). Beszélgetés Marslakókkal. OOK-Press. Vaszprém, Hungary; Marx, G. (1997). A Marslakók Legendája. Fizikai Szemle 3, pp. 77]

Max recorded the stories passed down orally in an alternative way - aliens do exist and they pretend to be Hungarians. A widely circulated anecdote is as follows:

The universe is vast and contains countless stars, possibly with planets orbiting them. The simplest organisms will reproduce, evolve through natural selection, and become more complex, until eventually active, thinking beings emerge. They are hungry for new worlds and should spread out across the galaxy. It would be hard for those very remarkable and gifted creatures to ignore such a beautiful place as our Earth. "Well," Fermi asked the crucial question, "if all this happened, they should have arrived on Earth by now, so where are they?" Szilard, a man with an impish sense of humor, had the perfect answer to the Fermi Paradox: "They are among us," he said, "but they call themselves Hungarians."

——Excerpt from György Marx, A Marslakók Érkezése (Arrival of the Martians, 2000).

Biologist Francis Crick also had a version of the Hungarian Martian myth that prophesied in his book Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature (1981). Other popular versions of the origin of the Martians include this one from Yankee Magazine in 1980:

Von Karman, Kemeny, von Neumann, Szilard, Teller and Wigner were all born in the same area of ​​Budapest. No wonder the scientists at Los Alamos accepted the idea that a Martian spacecraft crashed somewhere in central Europe more than a thousand years ago. There are three solid pieces of evidence that Hungarians are of alien descent: 1. They like to wander around (just like the gypsies came out of the same area). 2. They speak an extremely simple, logical language that has nothing to do with the languages ​​of their neighbors. And they are much smarter than Earthlings. Kemeny, speaking with a slight Martian accent, adds an explanation that Hungarian is easier to learn to read and write than English or French, so Hungarian students have more time to learn mathematics.

As Marks explains, "An obvious explanation for the Martian myths could be their strange language: its grammar and vocabulary are radically different from those of Indo-European languages."

Einstein's assistant Leopold Infeld wrote in his memoirs: "It is much more difficult to understand anything about America in Princeton than to understand Britain in Cambridge." In Fine Hall (the building where Princeton's mathematics department is located), people spoke English with many different accents, so this mixed accent became known as Fine Hall English.

—Excerpt from Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind (1998)

Regarding Wigner’s accent, Teller once said: “Sometimes even Hungarians find Hungarians hard to understand.”

As Max writes: "There is only one factual evidence of the landing of men on Mars. The fact that the names of von Karman, von Neumann and Szilard cannot be found on a street map of Budapest, but there are craters on the Moon named after them, proves the extraterrestrial origin of the 'Hungarians.'"

Finally, those interested in the Budapest Martians can check out the book: Martians of Science: Five Physicists Who Changed the Twentieth Century (Istvan Hargittai, 2008).

This article is translated from Jørgen Veisdal, The Martians of Budapest, original address:
https://www.privatdozent.co/p/the-martians-of-budapest-03b

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