Thread drift:

EB, my friend was Elmar Lanczos. His father was Cornelius Lanczos. [PHOTO] But I would be very surprised if Cornelius Lanczos and Leó Szilárd were not acquainted. [BRIEF BIOGRAPHY]

The bio doesn't say anything about his getting his family out of Hungary, but I got the story—as well as he could remember it, because he was pretty young when it happened—from Elmar.

I met Dr. Lanczos on two occasions. Rather small in physical stature (maybe 5'6" or so), he was still very impressive. He looked like a falcon. And I had the impression that his brain emitted a 60-cycle hum!

Elmar told me that in Hungary, the name is pronounced "LAHN-tsosh." But to make it a bit easier on English speakers, they now pronounced it "LAHN-choss" ("choss" with a long "o").

Elmar was an important part of the folk music scene in Seattle in the late Fifties and on. He couldn't sing for sour applesauce, but he had no particular ambitions along that line. He owned a house north of the University of Washington, and on weekends, it was almost always fine with him for folk song enthusiasts to gather in his living room and sing until the wee small hours of the morning. He also had a monumental record collection of folk music, which he was willing to lend to various singers to learn songs from (provided he knew they would handle the records carefully).

He was a writer, and the hoots in his living room came to a halt for a year or two when he went to studied at Trinity College in Dublin, but resumed when he returned.

He died a few years ago from bone cancer. He left two sons:   Andrew, who lived in England for awhile and now lives in Tel Aviv;   and Ely, who lives in Seattle. His widow, Alice, is a very good friend of Barbara's and mine, and we get together often.

A picture of Cornelius Lanczos sits on Alice's mantelpiece.

People like Elmar Lanczos are the salt of the earth.

Don Firth

P. S. Elmar recounted an incident about his father. Dr. Lanczos was to deliver a lecture in a college auditorium, and when he walked out before the crowd of scientists and students, someone handed him a lavalier microphone that hung on a ribbon around the neck. Dr. Lanczos fumbled with it a bit and couldn't figure out how to put it on. So the fellow who handed it to him came out and helped him with it. The mic was on, and Dr. Lanczos was heard—loud and clear—to say to the fellow helping him with the mic, "I'm only a theoretical physicist."

Big roar of laughter!