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likely to enjoy about the same chance
     of success as “shooting birds in the dark in a country where there are only a few birds.” 16 A doyen of the scientific establishment, the great experimentalist Lord Ernest Rutherford dismissed the prospect of a chain
     reaction with devastating British understatement: “The outlook for gaining useful energy from atoms by artificial processes
     of transformation does not look promising.” 17 With comments like these the order of the day, it is easy to appreciate Szilard’s difficulty in getting support for exploring
     the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction.
    It was not an idle joke. Recognizing that the days of peace in Europe were numbered and that the future of Western civilization
     and modern science would depend on the degree of support that could be mustered in the New World, Szilard decided to emigrate
     to America. About Christmastime 1937 Szilard attended a dinner at Magdalen College in Oxford, where a fellow of the college
     told Szilard that he was leaving soon on a visit to the United States. “Buy a one-way ticket,” Szilard advised him. 18
    Szilard’s reasoning was simple. As he told a fellow Jewish refugee planning to leave the Continent, Britain was “a
very
likeable country, but it would certainly be a lot smarter if you went to America. In America you would be a free human being
     and very soon would not even be a stranger.” 19 In practical terms, he also saw a much better opportunity for nuclear physics research in the United States.
    In January 1938 Szilard decided the time had come to depart. He begged his parents in Budapest to join him, but they refused
     to budge—they were old and did not want to leave the only world they knew. Szilard could do nothing more than bid them a sad
     farewell. Once in New York, he found himself quickly and happily at home. Nazism was far away. He did not feel like a foreigner.
     When he had some difficulty adjusting, this nation of immigrants offered understanding and sympathy. He had felt much more
     like a refugee in Europe.
    So, quickly and eagerly Szilard decided to become a U.S. citizen. Emotionally and politically, he felt that he already belonged
     irretrievably to America. In his thinking and action, he scarcely had any affinity with the mentality of Nazi Germany. Soon
     he was in touch with other refugee physicists in the United States and was visiting Columbia frequently to see Rabi. With
     Rabi’s help, Szilard resumed his research on the atomic nucleus and began warning anyone who would listen about the looming
     threat of Nazism.
    Although Szilard had conceived the idea of a chain reaction, he lacked the resources—a laboratory, assistants, and financial
     support—to search for it. That quest fell to another refugee physicist, Enrico Fermi, who had the resources that Szilard lacked—and
     the brains to match. In contrast to Szilard, who moved from one temporary job to the next, lived in hotel rooms, and proposed
     experiments to other people, Fermi was a well-established academic who ran a famous physics institute located in a small,
     quiet park on a hill in central Rome. The park, landscaped with palm trees, bamboo thickets, and a garden that attracted singing
     sparrows at dusk, made the institute a peaceful and attractive center of study.
    A short man with rounded shoulders, narrow nose, thick black hair, and hazel eyes that stood out against a dark complexion,
     Fermi charmed people by craning his neck forward and flashing a winning smile that exposed a gap between his front teeth.
     Quiet and unpretentious, he displayed an unusual combination of personal modesty and self-confidence. He wore a simple leather
     jacket and always drove his own car. When he encountered a roadblock in front of his institute one day, he leaned out the
     window and said, “I am His Excellency Enrico Fermi’s chauffeur”—which got him waved through. He had such a gift for seeing
     into the heart of problems and