This Month in Physics History November 11, 1930: Patent granted
for Einstein-Szilard Refrigerator Szilard was born in Budapest,
Hungary in 1898, the son of a civil engineer, and served in the
Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I. After the war, he
returned to university, studying physics under Einstein and Max
Planck, among others. His dissertation was in thermodynamics,
and in 1929 he published a seminal paper, “On the Lessening of
Entropy in a Thermodynamic System by Interference of an
Intelligent Being”–part of an ongoing attempt by physicists to
better understand the “Maxwell’s Demon” thought experiment first
proposed by James Clerk Maxwell in the 19th century. Szilard had
a knack for invention, applying for patents for an x-ray
sensitive cell and improvements to mercury vapor lamps while
still a young scientist. He also filed patents for an electron
microscope, as well as the linear accelerator and the cyclotron,
all of which have helped revolutionize physics research.
Szilard’s most important contri