"The Martians" ( hu, "A marslakók") is a term used to refer to a group of prominent Hungarian scientists (mostly, but not exclusively, physicists and mathematicians) of Jewish descent who emigrated from Europe to the United States in the early half of the 20th century.M. Whitman (2012) ''The Martian's Daughter: A Memoir'',

University of Michigan Press The University of Michigan Press is part of Michigan Publishing at the University of Michigan Library. It publishes 170 new titles each year in the humanities and social sciences. Titles from the press have earned numerous awards, including L ...

Leo Szilard Leo Szilard (; hu, Szilárd Leó, pronounced ; born Leó Spitz; February 11, 1898 – May 30, 1964) was a Hungarian-German-American physicist and inventor. He conceived the nuclear chain reaction in 1933, patented the idea of a nuclear ...

, who jokingly suggested that Hungary was a front for aliens from

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury (planet), Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Mars (mythology), Roman god of war. Mars is a terr ...

, used this term. In an answer to the question of why there is no evidence of intelligent life beyond Earth 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 law of lepton flavor conservation. Life He was the first non-Briti ...

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

Men frequently included in the description

Paul Erdős Paul Erdős ( hu, Erdős Pál ; 26 March 1913 – 20 September 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 ...

Paul Halmos Paul Richard Halmos ( hu, Halmos Pál; March 3, 1916 – October 2, 2006) was a Hungarian-born American mathematician and statistician who made fundamental advances in the areas of mathematical logic, probability theory, statistics, operator ...

Theodore von Kármán Theodore von Kármán ( hu, ( szőllőskislaki) Kármán Tódor ; born Tivadar Mihály Kármán; 11 May 18816 May 1963) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, aerospace engineer, and physicist who was active primarily in the fields of aeronaut ...

, John G. Kemeny,

John von Neumann John von Neumann (; hu, Neumann János Lajos, ; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist, engineer and polymath. He was regarded as having perhaps the widest cove ...

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

Leó Szilárd Leo Szilard (; hu, Szilárd Leó, pronounced ; born Leó Spitz; February 11, 1898 – May 30, 1964) was a Hungarian-German-American physicist and inventor. He conceived the nuclear chain reaction in 1933, patented the idea of a nuclear ...

Edward Teller Edward Teller ( hu, Teller Ede; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" (see the Teller–Ulam design), although he did not care for ...

, and

Eugene Wigner Eugene Paul "E. P." Wigner ( hu, Wigner Jenő Pál, ; 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 co ...

are included in ''The Martians'' group.

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, ''E.T.'' (abbreviation of ''extraterrestrial'')A marslakók legendája –

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

, and

cannot be found on the map of

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

, but craters can be found on the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

bearing their names: *

Szilard (crater) Szilard is a damaged lunar impact crater that lies to the east-northeast of the crater Richardson. It is named after Leó Szilárd, the scientist who theorised nuclear chain reactions and famously worked on the atomic bomb during World War II. A ...

Von Neumann (crater) Von Neumann is a lunar impact crater that lies on the far side of the Moon, in the northern hemisphere, named after polymath John von Neumann. It is nearly attached to the south-southeastern rim of the walled plain Campbell. The crater Ley is ...

Von Kármán (lunar crater) Von Kármán is a large lunar impact crater that is located in the southern hemisphere on the far side of the Moon. The crater is about in diameter and lies within an immense impact crater known as the South Pole–Aitken basin of roughly i ...

There is also a crater on Mars named after Von Kármán.

Central European scientists who emigrated from Europe to the United States

During and after World War II, many Central European scientists immigrated to the United States, mostly

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

refugees fleeing from

Nazism Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...

Communism Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

. Several were from

, and were instrumental in American scientific progress (e.g., developing the atomic bomb).

Men frequently included in the description

Origin of the name

Central European scientists who emigrated from Europe to the United States

References

Further reading