81 years ago, on 2 August 1939, Albert Einstein signed a letter from Hungarian-born physicists Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, and Edward Teller to US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in which they warned him that Germany’s development of an atomic bomb may be a theoretical possibility in the near future. This letter, then, led to the launch of the Manhattan Project.

This year, the Hungarian academic community commemorates the hundred and twentieth anniversary of the birth of the second ‘Martian’ scientist, John von Neumann, with a variety of events, publications, and exhibitions.