Szymborska’s father was the steward on a count’s family estate. When she was eight, the family moved to Kraków, and she attended high school there. Between 1945 and 1948 she studied literature and sociology at Kraków’s Jagiellonian University. Her first published poem, “Szukam sowa” (“I Seek the Word”), appeared in a Kraków newspaper in March 1945. Dlatego yjemy (1952; “That’s Why We Are Alive”), her first volume of poetry, was an attempt to conform to Socialist Realism, the officially approved literary style of Poland’s communist regime. In 1953 she joined the editorial staff of ycie Literackie (“Literary Life”), a weekly magazine of intellectual interests, and remained there until 1981. During this period she gained a reputation not only as a poet but also as a book reviewer and translator of French poetry. In the 1980s she wrote for the underground press under the pseudonym Stancykówna and also wrote for a magazine in Paris.

Between 1952 and 1993 Szymborska published more than a dozen volumes of poetry. She later disowned the first two volumes, which contain poems in the style of Socialist Realism, as not indicative of her true poetic intentions. Her third volume, Woanie do Yeti (1957; “Calling Out to Yeti”), marked a clear shift to a more personal style of poetry and expressed her dissatisfaction with communism (Stalinism in particular). Subsequent volumes, such as Sól (1962; “Salt”), Sto pociech (1967; “No End of Fun”), and Wszelki wypadek (1972; “Could Have”), contain poems noteworthy for their precise, concrete language and ironic detachment. Selections of her poems were translated into English and published as Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems (1981), People on a Bridge: Poems (1990), View with a Grain of Sand (1995), and Nothing Twice: Selected Poems (1997). Poems, New and Collected, 1957–1997 appeared in 1998.

Physicist, scientist. Born on February 11, 1898, in Budapest, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary). A student of such famed physicists as Albert Einstein and Max Planck, Leo Szilard was instrumental in getting the United States working on the atomic bomb. The son of a civil engineer, he followed his father’s footsteps in 1916. Szilard became an engineering student at a technical university in Budapest. But he was only there a year before he joined the Austro-Hungarian Army.

In 1917, World War I was still raging. Szilard was saved from going to the front lines by illness. After the war, he briefly returned to school in Budapest before transferring to the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg, Germany, in 1920. Szilard switched schools and majors soon after. At the University of Berlin, he studied physics with the likes of Albert Einstein, Max Plank, and Max von Laue.

With von Laue as his advisor, Szilard worked on his thesis, which explored thermodynamics, or the study of the physics of heat. He earned his Ph.D. in Physics from the university in 1922. Not long after finishing his studies, Szilard worked as a research assistant to von Laue at the Institute for Theoretical Physics for several years. He also collaborated with Einstein on a type of home refrigerator. One of the most notable results of their collaboration was the Einstein-Szilard pump.

In 1927, Szilard became an instructor, or privatdozent, at the University of Berlin. He published a paper, “On the Decrease of Entropy in a Thermodynamic System by the Intervention of Intelligent Beings,” two years later. The paper was based on his work on the second law of thermodynamics.

Leaving Germany in 1933, Szilard moved because the rise of the Nazi Party. The party’s anti-Semitic policies made it difficult for Jewish academics and professionals like Szilard to stay there. He went to Vienna for a time and then arrived in London in 1934. There Szilard worked at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital where he conducted experiments on chain reactions. While Szilard did not find the chain reaction he was searching for, he did find a way to separate isotopes, or special parts, of certain elements.

Szilard continued his work on nuclear physics at the Clarendon Laboratory at Oxford. He tried to convince other physicists, including Enrico Fermi, about the possibility of harnessing atomic energy as well as to warn them about its potential dangers. In the late 1930s, he moved to the United States to teach at Columbia University.

The physics community was in awe and concern over the discovery of nuclear fission by Otto Hahn and Fritz Straussmann in Germany in 1939. Szilard and several other scientists convinced Albert Einstein to write to President Franklin D. Roosevelt about building the atomic bomb. With the Nazis trying to take over Europe, they were concerned about what would happen if the Germans developed the bomb first.

To this end, Szilard became a part of the famed Manhattan Project, which sought to transform atomic energy for military purposes. He conducted research at the University of Chicago from 1942 to 1945. There Szilard worked with Enrico Fermi to build the first nuclear reactor. 

Forever changed by seeing the destructive force of the atomic bomb, Szilard joined the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists. This international organization wanted to prevent further military use of atomic energy. For the rest of his life, Szilard worked on nuclear safety and arms control. He started the Council for a Livable World in 1962, which is still dedicated to reducing the threat posed by nuclear weapons.      

Szilard died on May 30, 1964, in La Jolla, California.

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