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			Leo Szilard Born Feb 11 1898 - Died May 30 1964 Neutronic Reactor / Nuclear Fission Neutronic Reactor / Nuclear Fission Patent Number(s) 2,708,656 Inducted 1996 Leo Szilard, along with Enrico Fermi, was awarded a patent for the nuclear fission reactor in 1955. He knew that fission was the key to releasing nuclear energy and after experimenting at Columbia University, he encouraged Fermi, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1976, to become involved. On December 2, 1942, in Chicago, they set off the first controlled nuclear chain reaction. Szilard fully understood the implications of nuclear fission, and it was he who coordinated the letter sent to President Roosevelt from Einstein encouraging the establishment of the Manhattan Project. Invention Impact Inventor Bio Throughout his lifetime, Szilard made significant contributions to the fields of statistical mechanics, nuclear physics, nuclear engineering, genetics, molecular biology, and political science. Leo Szilard was born in Budapest, Hungary; during World War I, he was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army, interrupting his studies at the Budapest Institute of Technology. After the war, he received his doctorate from the University of Berlin. Szilard left Germany during World War II and ultimately came to the United States. Very interested in public policy and possessing a strong social consciousness, he also started the movement for the civilian control of atomic energy in 1945. Eventually, he was the one who gained Soviet Premier Khruschev's personal assent to a ""hot line"" between the US and the USSR to prevent nuclear war.Szilard's interests turned to biology after the war, and in 1946, he became a professor of biophysics at the University of Chicago. In 1963, he became a resident fellow at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, a research center he helped create.