Talk:The Martians (scientists)

Is this name used?
This name is very popular in Hungary, but is there a source for a frequent use (today or in the forties) which does not originate in Hungary? I couldn't find one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.181.216.22 (talk) 07:36, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Requested move 29 December 2015

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Moved to The Martians (scientists). Natg 19 (talk) 01:07, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

The Martians (group) → ? – The band The Martians (band) is also a "group", so the disambiguator used on this article is poor and ambiguous. It should be WP:PRECISE enough to identify this topic without confusion with the band, so a different disambiguator, or additional disambiguation needs to be added. -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 08:38, 29 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Support a move The Martians (scientists) would be the most WP:RECOGNIZABLE. In ictu oculi (talk) 09:24, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Support The Martians (scientists). Dicklyon (talk) 02:54, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Support Martians (scientists). "The" isn't needed per WP:THE. The Martians (group) should redirect to the dab page.--Cúchullain t/ c 19:40, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Support move to The Martians (scientists). WP:THE supports including the article IMO. Agree that The Martians (group) should redirect to the DAB. Andrewa (talk) 20:53, 6 January 2016 (UTC)


 * ''The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Emirgate v immigrate
I just reverted four edits by anonymous user 2602:306:cec2:a3a0:85d1:6eb2:8648:317e, changing "immigrate" back to the original "emigrate". "Emigrate" is the more correct and more neutral term for the move of "The Martians" from Hungary to the United States. "Immigrate" would be the word from the point of view of the United States; "emigrate" is the word from a neutral point of view. For example, the Albert Einstein and the Enrico Fermi Wikipedia pages speak of their emigration, not immigration, to the United States. -- Roger Hui (talk) 15:55, 19 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Another wave of changing emigration to immigration, by anonymous (IP) users (and reverting it back and forth) occurred recently, and was not discussed on this talk page. I suppose US citizens see anybody migrating into US as immigration.
 * But those people were emigrating places in Europe, where they stopped being welcome, and several of them moved several times in Europe before those now mentioned as Martians immigrated US.
 * E.g., Leo Szilard, when he was released from the army after the Armistice of WW I about 1920, could not re-enroll university in Pest where he studied before having been conscripted to the army for WW I, because of Hungarian nacionalists then there in power, so he (and several other future Martians in similar position) moved to study in Germany (where Einstein had before that invited to head the Institute Max Planck in Berlin, and for that had to accept Prussian citizenship, and with that re-accept German citizenship).
 * When Nazis got to power, future "Martians", being of Jewish descent, also first moved out of Germany (some first to Swiss, some to Great Britain, etc.). Same happened to Austrian and German (and other) people of Jewish descent or associated with them, with similar intellectual potential (like Kurt Gödel from Viena), but because their native languages were more understandable to by Americans than Magyar, so they were not seen as the same kind of people as the "Martians" we discuss here.
 * That background of having to emigrate (often several times) for people in question here seem to be unknown to some US editors, who then think immigrate and emigrate are logically equivalent, and from their point of view, immigrate to be better.
 * I propose to take "the correct word is 'immigrate', as one 'immigrates TO' and 'emigrates FROM'" under consideration, and if nobody opposes I'll change "emigrate to US" to "emigrate from Europe to US" or equivalent, as I see appropriate, to try to put that piece of edit war to rest. Marjan Tomki SI (talk) 22:49, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Marjan Tomki SI. Sounds good to me. Edwardx (talk) 23:03, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I did it, but it is not complete.
 * One piece of the problem is that that statement including "emigrate" is part of category name Category:Jews who emigrated to escape Nazism, which should be changed in sync with the category, and for that change I think also a consent is needed, and I am also not yet confortable changing categories, but I am pretty sure every article included in that category it should have at least the statement connecting it to that category changed.
 * The other is that the statement including "emigrate" was also in a piece of the article that was seen as not sourced well enough, and moved to talk page. I have not yet made the change there/here, and I have not yet addressed sources supporting that contents. Any advice? Marjan Tomki SI (talk) 00:02, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Is this not beyond dispute: grammatically, you emigrate from and immigrate (in-migrate) to a country? Janosabel (talk) 13:11, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
 * What decides is not the preposition but the viewpoint. Seen from Hungary, they emigrated to Britain or America; seen from their new home, they immigrated from Hungary. —Tamfang (talk) 21:14, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Central European Scientists who Emigrated to the United States
The section Central European Scientists who Emigrated to the United States states:

> During and after World War II many Central European scientists immigrated to the United States, mostly Jewish refugees fleeing from Nazism or Communism ...

I believe the emigration started before the war around the time the Nazis obtained a foothold on power in Germany. For example, in The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann, the article states von Neuman decided war was coming to Europe and began his emigration in 1937 when he was a visiting professor at Princeton. His time with the Manhattan project is detailed as 1937–1945.

(This may suffer from bias on my part due to being from the United States of Corporate America. We generally view the war started around 1941. But I understand Poland was invaded earlier in 1939, though aggressions in the region predate the invasion). Jeffrey Walton (talk) 14:56, 22 November 2019 (UTC)


 * As far as I see, we could see "Martians" in three meanings:
 * smart people talking with strange accent, ununderstandable to Americans when talking to each other in their native language (both because of the subject of talk and the strange language), having emigrated from Hungary at any time
 * such people emigrating from Europe before and during WW II, much because of antisemitism of Nazi regime
 * such people being attested by sources to be The Martians of Science
 * Using it with first and second meaning, it includes different people depending who of such people an American knows, or met. More, even in the meaning of most influential Martians of Science, different people rank scientists and their influence differently, and that's why "some include" can in this case be a fact and not a weasel word. But those statements should be supported by citing a good source.
 * This section applies to first group, but not the second and third group, but that is not evident, and should probably be made evident. Now, to somebody young and not knowing the context it might be understood the five, or nine Martians that "have helped defeat Hitler" have fled communist regime years after WW II.
 * Fleeing from Nazism before and during WW II, and fleeing Communism when it was forced on Hungarians, were two different processes, though they have a lot in common. At least, this section needs (at least) two paragraphs (or subsections) created, the first (ones, if more) should address pre and during WW II and the last should include later (communist etc.) material.
 * I don't yet know if I can find sources to support such difference and if putting that in the article could be called original research, but I'll try ;-)
 * I also went a bit through history of the article and a lot of info already having been there got dropped (including I think some sources). E.g., an editor dropped two paragraphs of Magyar text instead having it translated here I'll see if I can find time to do something about all that. Marjan Tomki SI (talk) 00:10, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
 * The entire section is absolutely nonsensical as for now: all mentioned martians flew - some from Hungary, others from Germany and even Switzerland where they were working- before the end of WWII, many in the '30s, worried by antisemitism. No martian mentioned flew from communism. Reported statements are not from members of the group. Cdng arborist (talk) 16:11, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Sourcing
It appears this entire page is a translation of the Hungarian wiki, which is fine as we are slowly finding sources to support most of the claims.

I believe the source for the table at the end of the article could be copied over rather easily, but it will take some light translation.

I'll also throw the following as a possible source for some of the claims in the article. "The myth of the martians and the golden age of Hungarian science" https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00414313 71.11.5.2 (talk) 20:19, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

Uncited material in need of citations
I am moving the following uncited material here until it can be properly supported with inline citations of reliable, secondary sources, per WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:CS, WP:NOR, WP:IRS, WP:PSTS, et al. This diff shows where it was in the article. Nightscream (talk) 15:14, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

Persons frequently included in the description
Dennis Gabor, Ervin Bauer, Róbert Bárány, George de Hevesy, Nicholas Kurti, George Klein, Eva Klein, Michael Polanyi and Marcel Riesz are also sometimes named, though they did not emigrate to the United States.

Loránd Eötvös, Kálmán Tihanyi, Zoltán Lajos Bay, Victor Szebehely, Albert Szent-Györgyi, Georg von Békésy, John Harsanyi and Maria Telkes are often mentioned in connection.

Elizabeth Róna, a Hungarian nuclear chemist who emigrated to the US in 1941 to work on the Manhattan Project and discovered Uranium-Y, is a colleague, but not usually included.

Origin of the name
Since they all spoke English with a strong accent (made famous by horror actor Bela Lugosi), they were considered outsiders in American society. The Hungarian scientists were seemingly superhuman in intellect, spoke an incomprehensible native language, and came from a small obscure country. This led to them being called Martians, a name they jocularly adopted.

The joke was that Hungarian scientists are descendants of a Martian scout force that landed in Budapest around the year 1900. The aliens later departed the planet after it was found unsuitable, but left behind children by several Earth women who all became famous scientists. John von Neumann cited the close geographic proximity of the Martians' birthplaces and the well-traceable career path (an interest in chemistry and led the individual in question to German universities where he moved towards physics, at which point the Martian left Europe for the US.), as mock evidence to support this claim.

List of "The Martians"
According to György Marx, "The Martians" are as follows: