The Martians (scientists) in the context of "Leo Szilard"

The Einstein–Szilard letter was a letter written by Leo Szilard and signed by Albert Einstein on August 2, 1939, that was sent to President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt. Written by Szilard in consultation with fellow Hungarian physicists Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner, the letter warned that Germany might develop atomic bombs and suggested that the United States start its own nuclear program. It prompted action by Roosevelt, which eventually resulted in the Manhattan Project, the development of the first atomic bombs, and the use of these bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Edward Teller (Hungarian: Teller Ede; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist and chemical engineer who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" and one of the creators of the Teller–Ulam design inspired by Stanisław Ulam. He had a volatile personality, and was "driven by his megaton ambitions, had a messianic complex, and displayed autocratic behavior." He devised a thermonuclear Alarm Clock bomb with a yield of 1000 MT (1 GT of TNT) and proposed delivering it by boat or submarine to incinerate a continent.

Born in Austria-Hungary in 1908, Teller emigrated to the US in the 1930s, one of the many so-called "Martians", a group of Hungarian scientist émigrés. He made numerous contributions to nuclear and molecular physics, spectroscopy, and surface physics. His extension of Enrico Fermi's theory of beta decay, in the form of Gamow–Teller transitions, provided an important stepping stone in its application, while the Jahn–Teller effect and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) theory have retained their original formulation and are mainstays in physics and chemistry. Teller analyzed his problems using basic principles of physics and often discussed with his cohorts to make headway through difficult problems. This was seen when he worked with Stanislaw Ulam to get a workable thermonuclear fusion bomb design, but later temperamentally dismissed Ulam's aid. Herbert York stated that Teller utilized Ulam's general idea of compressive heating to start thermonuclear fusion to generate his own sketch of a workable "Super" bomb. Before Ulam's idea, Teller's classical Super was essentially a system for heating uncompressed liquid deuterium to the point, Teller hoped, that it would sustain thermonuclear burning. It was, in essence, a simple idea from physical principles, which Teller pursued with a ferocious tenacity, even if he was wrong and shown that it would not work. To get support from Washington for his Super weapon project, Teller proposed a thermonuclear radiation implosion experiment as the "George" shot of Operation Greenhouse.