One of the most enduring and entertaining images of Hungarians during the second half of the 20th century is the idea of Hungarians as aliens or Martians. Much of this is tongue-in-cheek, is not intended to be pejorative, and has been exploited to good effect and with great enjoyment by Hungarians themselves – to the point of their likely having been behind its origination. There are multiple overlapping/competing descriptions of how all this started. Consensus suggests that it came out of the circles of émigré nuclear scientists, physicists, and mathematicians who came to the US during 1930s and 1940s, many of whom were collocated at Los Alamos, New Mexico for the Manhattan Project.
As George Marx, a Hungarian professor of atomic physics in Budapest, asks in his extremely engaging chapter entitled «The Martians’ Vision of the Future,» how is it that there were groups of Austrians, Germans, and Italians involved in these scientific breakthroughs and yet it was Hungarians alone who seemed to gain the moniker and association of «alien?» Marx appears to prefer the account according to which one day the Italian Enrico Fermi was speculating about the universe and the possibility of life on other planets, and Leo Szilard, a Hungarian, ventured an answer to Fermi’s question:
«And so,» Fermi came to his overwhelming question, «if all this has been happening, they should have arrived here by now, so where are they?» It was Leo Szilard, a man with an impish sense of humor, who supplied the perfect reply to Fermi’s rhetoric: «They are among us,» he said, «but they call themselves Hungarians.» (according to Marx, this is Francis Crick’s version of the myth)
Marx elaborates on the «birth to a legend»:
The myth of the Martian origin of the Hungarian scientists who entered world history on American soil during World War II probably originated in Los Alamos. Leon Lederman, director of the Fermilab, reported possible hidden intentions. The production of scientists and mathematicians in the early 20th century was so prolific that many otherwise calm observers believe Budapest was settled by Martians in a plan to infiltrate and take over the planet Earth…According to myth, at a top secret meeting of the Manhattan Project, General Groves left for the gents’ room. Szilard then said: «Perhaps we may now continue in Hungarian!» Hungarian émigrés enjoyed speaking their mother tongue whenever a chance offered itself. This has made them look suspicious. Los Alamos was a place of top security. General Groves was annoyed that Neumann and Wigner had frequent telephone conversations in Hungarian. [Teller, talk in Budapest 1991.] The «thick Hungarian accent» was often heard even in the corridors of the Pentagon. (The Lugosi accent made the alien power of Dracula, the count from the faraway Transylvania even more realistic.)
Marx recounts the details of the arrival of the Martians-cum-Hungarians on planet Earth:
–Gabor, von Kármán, Kemeny, von Neumann, Szilard, Teller, and Wigner were born in the same quarter of Budapest [author's note—most were Jewish…it is interesting to note that some anti-Semitic Hungarian nationalists at the same time assiduously include these names in lists of famous Hungarians]. No wonder the scientists in Los Alamos accepted the idea that well over one thousand years ago a Martian spaceship crashlanded somewhere in the center of Europe. There are three firm proofs of the extraterrestrial origins of the Hungarians: they like to wander about (like gypsies radiating out from the same region). They speak an exceptionally simple and logical language which has not the slightest connection with the language of their neighbors. And they are so much smarter than the terrestrials. (In a slight Martian accent John G. Kemeny added an explanation, namely, that it is so much easier to learn reading and writing in Hungarian than in English or French, that Hungarian kids have much more time left to study mathematics.) [quoted by Marx from "Yankee" Magazine (?) 1980] ([http://www.mek.iif.hu/kiallit/tudtor/tudos1/martians.html])
Finally, in a somewhat more serious vein, the alien connotation has been explained in analytical terms as follows:
If we understand SteeDee’s theory correctly, the first Hungarians-
are-aliens story arose from some minor human incident. The
Hungarians may have stood out from the rest of the staff at Los
Alamos, perhaps by maintaining their own cliques and speaking
their own indecipherable tongue, and this made the English
speakers uncomfortable. The Hungarians were like aliens to the
rest, and since there were many reports of «flying saucers» in the
popular press in the 50s and late 40s, the «Martian» label was a
convenient way to sublimate the social tensions. To be called
extraterrestrials, in a jocular, rib-poking way, might have helped
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