The book, published by Vince Kiadó in Hungary, will soon be published in English by the Oxford University Press.
The title of the book is a reference to anecdotes told about some of the men during their work on the Manhattan Plan, the US programme to build a nuclear bomb, suggesting they were Martians, speaking Hungarian only as a cover.
Martians or not, the five left a legacy to science: Szilárd conceived the nuclear chain reaction, Wigner, a Nobel Prize winner, laid the foundation for the theory of symmetries in quantum mechanics, Teller is often referred to as the ?father of the hydrogen bomb?, Kármán was responsible for many key advances in aerodynamics, and Neumann was a pioneer of the modern digital computer.
"The five Martians were a special group of people: they were not only outstanding scientists but they were also willing to take action to protect the United States and the free world even at the stake of their scientific careers," Professor Norbert Kroó, deputy-chairman of the Hungarian Academy of Science, said at the event.
Szilárd sent a letter, written after consulting with his Hungarian colleagues, to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt advising him that Nazi Germany might be researching the possibility of nuclear fission to create an atomic bomb, and suggested that the United States should begin researching the possibility itself.
"They took part in developing the nuclear bomb and the hydrogen bomb for a reason. They were driven by the pressure to escape, rooted in their double emigration: first from Budapest after World War I, and then from Germany 15 years later. In the wake of escape and expulsion, they played a role in protection against the actual aggressor," historian and university lecturer Tibor Frank said.
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI)
