"The Martians" () were a group of prominent

scientist A scientist is a person who Scientific method, researches to advance knowledge in an Branches of science, area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engag ...

s (mostly, but not exclusively,

physicists A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

and mathematicians) of Hungarian Jewish descent who emigrated from Europe to the United States in the early half of the 20th century. P. 55 Leo Szilard, who jokingly suggested that

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

was a front for aliens from

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", because of its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous carbon dioxide () atmosphere. At the average surface level the atmosph ...

, used this term. In an answer to the question of why there is no evidence of intelligent life beyond Earth (called the Fermi paradox) despite the high probability of it existing, Szilárd responded: "They are already here among us they just call themselves Hungarians." This account is featured in

György Marx György Marx (25 May 1927 – 2 December 2002) was a Hungarian physicist, astrophysicist, science historian and professor. He discovered the lepton numbers and established the Lepton number#Lepton flavor conservation, law of lepton flavor conse ...

's book ''The Voice of the Martians.''

Men included in the description

Individuals named as members of ''The Martians'' group include: *

Paul Erdős Paul Erdős ( ; 26March 191320September 1996) was a Hungarian mathematician. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians and producers of mathematical conjectures of the 20th century. pursued and proposed problems in discrete mathematics, g ...

Paul Halmos Paul Richard Halmos (; 3 March 1916 – 2 October 2006) was a Kingdom of Hungary, Hungarian-born United States, American mathematician and probabilist who made fundamental advances in the areas of mathematical logic, probability theory, operat ...

* Theodore von Kármán * John G. Kemeny *

John von Neumann John von Neumann ( ; ; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian and American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist and engineer. Von Neumann had perhaps the widest coverage of any mathematician of his time, in ...

George Pólya George Pólya (; ; December 13, 1887 – September 7, 1985) was a Hungarian-American mathematician. He was a professor of mathematics from 1914 to 1940 at ETH Zürich and from 1940 to 1953 at Stanford University. He made fundamental contributi ...

* Leó Szilárd *

Edward Teller Edward Teller (; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian and American Theoretical physics, theoretical physicist and chemical engineer who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" and one of the creators of ...

Eugene Wigner Eugene Paul Wigner (, ; November 17, 1902 – January 1, 1995) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who also contributed to mathematical physics. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "for his contributions to the theory of th ...

* Franz Alexander *

Peter Carl Goldmark Peter Carl Goldmark (born Péter Károly Goldmark; December 2, 1906 – December 7, 1977) was a Hungarian-American engineer who, during his time with Columbia Records, was instrumental in developing the long-playing microgroove 33 rpm phonogr ...

John Harsanyi John Charles Harsanyi (; May 29, 1920 and August 9, 2000) was a Hungarian-American economist who spent most of his career at the University of California, Berkeley. He was the recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1994. ...

* Peter Lax * George Olah * Egon Orowan *

John Polanyi John Charles Polanyi (; born 23 January 1929) is a German-born Canadian chemist. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research in chemical kinetics. Polanyi was born into the prominent Hungarian Polányi (Pollacsek) fami ...

* Valentine Telegdi * Cornelius Lanczos *

George de Hevesy George Charles de Hevesy (born György Bischitz; ; ; 1 August 1885 – 5 July 1966) was a Hungarian radiochemist and Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate, recognized in 1943 for his key role in the development of radioactive tracers to study ch ...

Origin of the name

The original story from

's book ''The Voice of the Martians'': When the question was put to

who was particularly proud of his

monogram A monogram is a motif (visual arts), motif made by overlapping or combining two or more letters or other graphemes to form one symbol. Monograms are often made by combining the initials of an individual or a company, used as recognizable symbo ...

, ''E.T.'' (abbreviation of ''extraterrestrial'') he looked worried, and said: "Von Kármán must have been talking." According to

, the extraterrestrial origin of the Hungarian scientists is proved by the fact that the names of Leó Szilárd,

, and Theodore von Kármán cannot be found on the map of

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

, but craters can be found on the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It Orbit of the Moon, orbits around Earth at Lunar distance, an average distance of (; about 30 times Earth diameter, Earth's diameter). The Moon rotation, rotates, with a rotation period (lunar ...

bearing their names: Szilard, Von Neumann, Von Kármán, and a crater on Mars, Von Kármán.

Men included in the description

Origin of the name

References

Further reading