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Edward Teller

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   CAPTION: Edward Teller

   Edward Teller in 1958 as Director of the Lawrence Livermore National
   Laboratory.
   Edward Teller in 1958 as Director of the Lawrence Livermore National
   Laboratory.
   Born 15 January 1908
   Budapest, Austria-Hungary
   Died 9 September 2003
   Stanford, California
   Residence USA
   Nationality Hungarian
   American
   Institution University of Göttingen
   Bohr Institute
   George Washington University
   Manhattan Project
   University of Chicago
   UC Berkeley
   Lawrence Livermore
   Hoover Institution
   Alma Mater University of Karlsruhe
   University of Leipzig
   Doctoral Advisor Werner Heisenberg
   Doctoral Students Chen Ning Yang
   Lincoln Wolfenstein
   Known for Jahn-Teller effect
   Hydrogen bomb development
   Religion Jewish

   Edward Teller (original Hungarian name Teller Ede) ( January 15, 1908 –
   September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian-born American theoretical physicist,
   known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb."

   Of Jewish descent, Teller immigrated to the United States in the 1930s,
   and was an early member of the Manhattan Project charged with
   developing the first atomic bombs. During this time he made a serious
   push to develop the first fusion-based weapons as well, but these were
   deferred until after World War II. After his controversial testimony in
   the security clearance hearing of his former Los Alamos colleague
   Robert Oppenheimer, Teller became ostracized from much of the
   scientific community. He continued to find support from the U.S.
   government and military research establishment. He was a co-founder of
   Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and was both its director and
   associate director for many years.

   In his later years he became especially known for his advocacy of
   controversial technological solutions to both military and civilian
   problems, including a plan to excavate an artificial harbour in Alaska
   using thermonuclear explosives. He was a prominent advocate of Ronald
   Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, and he was later accused of
   over-selling the technical feasibility of the program. Over the course
   of his long life, Teller was known both for his scientific ability and
   his difficult interpersonal relations and volatile personality, and is
   considered one of the key influences on the character Dr. Strangelove
   in the 1964 movie of the same name.

Early life and education

   Teller as a young boy.
   Enlarge
   Teller as a young boy.

   Teller was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary to a Jewish family. As a
   child, he was slow to speak, and his grandfather warned that he might
   be retarded. However, when he spoke, he did so in complete sentences.
   He left Hungary in 1926 (partly due to the Numerus clausus rule under
   Horthy's regime) and received his higher education in Germany. The
   political climate and revolutions in Hungary during his youth instilled
   a deep hatred for both Communism and Fascism in Teller. When he was a
   young student, his leg was severed in a streetcar accident in Munich,
   requiring him to wear a prosthetic foot and leaving him with a
   life-long limp. Teller graduated in chemical engineering at the
   University of Karlsruhe and received his Ph.D. in physics under Werner
   Heisenberg in 1930 at the University of Leipzig. Teller's Ph.D.
   dissertation dealt with one of the first accurate quantum mechanical
   treatments of the hydrogen molecular ion. In 1930 he befriended young
   Russian physicists George Gamow and Lev Landau, who then visited
   Western Europe.

   He spent two years at the University of Göttingen and left Germany in
   1933 through the aid of the Jewish Rescue Committee. He went briefly to
   England and moved for a year to Copenhagen, where he worked under Niels
   Bohr. In February 1934, he married "Mici" (Augusta Maria) Harkanyi, the
   sister of a longtime friend.

   In 1935, thanks to George Gamow's incentive, Teller was invited to the
   United States to become a Professor of Physics at the George Washington
   University, where he worked with Gamow until 1941. Prior to the
   discovery of fission in 1939, Teller was engaged as a theoretical
   physicist working in the fields of quantum, molecular, and nuclear
   physics. In 1941, after becoming a naturalized citizen of the United
   States, his interest turned to the use of nuclear energy, both fusion
   and fission.

   Perhaps Teller's most important contribution to science was the
   elucidation of the Jahn-Teller Effect (1939) which describes the
   geometrical distortion that electron clouds undergo in certain
   situations; this plays prominently in the description of chemical
   reactions of metals, and in particular the coloration of certain
   metallic dyes. In collaboration with Brunauer and Emmet, Teller also
   made an important contribution to surface physics and chemistry; the
   so-called Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) isotherm.

   When World War II began, Teller wanted to contribute to the war effort.
   On the advice of the well-known Caltech aerodynamicist and fellow
   Hungarian émigré Theodore von Kármán, Teller collaborated with his
   friend Hans Bethe in developing a theory of shock-wave propagation. In
   later years, their explanation of the behaviour of the gas behind such
   a wave proved valuable to scientists who were studying missile
   re-entry.

Work on the Manhattan Project

   Teller's ID badge photo from Los Alamos.
   Enlarge
   Teller's ID badge photo from Los Alamos.

   In 1942, Teller was invited to be part of Robert Oppenheimer's summer
   planning seminar at UC Berkeley for the origins of the Manhattan
   Project, the Allied effort to develop the first nuclear weapons. A few
   weeks earlier, Teller had been meeting with his friend and colleague
   Enrico Fermi about the prospects of atomic warfare, and Fermi had
   nonchalantly suggested that perhaps a weapon based on nuclear fission
   could be used to set off an even larger nuclear fusion reaction. Even
   though he initially quickly explained to Fermi why he thought the idea
   wouldn't work, Teller was fascinated by the possibility and was quickly
   bored with the idea of "just" an atomic bomb (which was not yet
   anywhere near completion). At the Berkeley session, Teller diverted
   discussion from the fission weapon to the possibility of a fusion
   weapon—what he called the "Super" (an early version of what was later
   known as a hydrogen bomb). (Rhodes 1995; Herken 2002)

   Teller became part of the Theoretical Physics division at the
   then-secret Los Alamos laboratory during the war, and continued to push
   his ideas for a fusion weapon even though it had been put on a low
   priority during the war (as the creation of a fission weapon was
   proving to be difficult enough by itself). Because of his interest in
   the H-bomb, and his frustration at having been passed over for director
   of the theoretical division (the job was instead given to Hans Bethe),
   Teller refused to engage in the calculations for the implosion of the
   fission bomb. This caused tensions with other researchers, as
   additional scientists had to be employed to do that work—including
   Klaus Fuchs, who later was revealed to be a Soviet spy. (Herken 2002)
   Apparently, Teller also managed to irk his neighbors by playing the
   piano late in the night. However, Teller made some valuable
   contributions to bomb research, especially in the elucidation of the
   implosion mechanism.

   In 1946, Teller participated in a conference in which the properties of
   thermonuclear fuels such as deuterium and the possible design of a
   hydrogen bomb was discussed. It was concluded that Teller's assessment
   of a hydrogen bomb had been too favourable, and that both the quantity
   of deuterium needed, as well as the radiation losses during deuterium
   burning, would shed doubt on its workability. Addition of expensive
   tritium to the thermonuclear mixture would likely lower its ignition
   temperature, but even so, nobody knew at that time how much tritium
   would be needed, and whether even tritium addition would encourage heat
   propagation. At the end of the conference, in spite of opposition by
   some members such as Robert Serber, Teller submitted an optimistic
   report in which he said that a hydrogen bomb was feasible, and that
   further work should be encouraged on its development. Klaus Fuchs had
   also participated in this conference, and transmitted this information
   to Moscow. The model of Teller's 'classical Super' was so uncertain,
   that Oppenheimer would later say that he wished the Russians were
   building their own hydrogen bomb based on that design, so that it would
   almost certainly retard their progress on it. In 1946, Teller left Los
   Alamos to return to the University of Chicago.

The hydrogen bomb

   The Teller-Ulam design kept the fission and fusion fuel physically
   separated from one another, and used radiation from the primary device
   to compress the secondary.
   Enlarge
   The Teller-Ulam design kept the fission and fusion fuel physically
   separated from one another, and used radiation from the primary device
   to compress the secondary.

   Following the Soviet Union's first test detonation of an atomic bomb in
   1949, President Truman announced a crash development program for a
   hydrogen bomb. Teller returned to Los Alamos in 1950 to work on the
   project. Teller quickly grew impatient with the progress of the
   program, insisted on involving more theorists, and accused his
   colleagues of lacking imagination. This worsened his relations with
   other researchers. None of his designs (or anyone else's), however,
   were yet workable. Bethe thought that had Teller not pressed for an
   early H-bomb test, the Russians' own development might possibly have
   been slowed down, particularly as the information which Klaus Fuchs
   gave them contained many incorrect technical details which rendered a
   workable H-bomb unfeasible. Russian scientists who had worked on the
   Soviet hydrogen bomb have claimed that they could see that the early
   ideas were infeasible as well as anyone else who had looked at them
   did, and also claimed that they developed their H-bomb wholly
   independently.

   In 1950, calculations by the Polish mathematician Stanislaw Ulam and
   his collaborator Cornelius Everett, along with confirmations by Fermi,
   had shown that not only was Teller's earlier estimate of the quantity
   of tritium needed for the H-bomb a low one, but that even with a higher
   amount of tritium, the energy losses in the fusion process would be too
   great to enable the fusion reaction to propagate. However, in 1951,
   after still many years of fruitless labor on the "Super," an innovative
   idea from Ulam was seized upon by Teller and developed into the first
   workable design for a megaton-range hydrogen bomb. The exact
   contribution provided respectively from Ulam and Teller to what became
   known as the Teller-Ulam design is not definitively known in the public
   domain—the degree of credit assigned to Teller by his contemporaries is
   almost exactly commensurate with how well they thought of Teller
   generally. In an interview with Scientific American from 1999, Teller
   told the reporter:

          "I contributed; Ulam did not. I'm sorry I had to answer it in
          this abrupt way. Ulam was rightly dissatisfied with an old
          approach. He came to me with a part of an idea which I already
          had worked out and difficulty getting people to listen to. He
          was willing to sign a paper. When it then came to defending that
          paper and really putting work into it, he refused. He said, 'I
          don't believe in it.'"

   The issue is controversial. Bethe spoke of Teller’s "stroke of genius"
   in the invention of the H-bomb as early as 1954. As late as 1997 Bethe
   repeated his view that “the crucial invention was made in 1951, by
   Teller.” Other scientists (antagonistic to Teller, such as J. Carson
   Mark) have claimed that Teller would have never gotten any closer
   without the assistance of Ulam and others.

   The breakthrough — the details of which are still classified — was
   apparently the separation of the fission and fusion components of the
   weapons, and to use the radiation produced by the fission bomb to first
   compress the fusion fuel before igniting it. However, compression alone
   would not have been enough and the other crucial idea — staging the
   bomb by separating the primary and secondary — seems to have been
   exclusively contributed by Ulam. Also, Ulam's idea seems to have been
   to use mechanical shock from the primary to encourage fusion in the
   secondary, while Teller quickly realised that radiation from the
   primary would do the job much earlier and more efficiently. Some
   members of the laboratory (J. Carson Mark in particular) later
   expressed that the idea to use the radiation would have eventually
   occurred to anyone working on the physical processes involved, and that
   the obvious reason why Teller thought of radiation right away was
   because he was already working on the " Greenhouse" tests for the
   spring of 1951, in which the effect of the energy from a fission bomb
   on a mixture of deuterium and tritium was going to be investigated.
   (Rhodes 1995)

   Whatever the actual components of the so-called Teller-Ulam design and
   the respective contributions of those who worked on it, after it was
   proposed it was immediately seen by the scientists working on the
   project as the answer which had been so long sought. Those who
   previously had doubted whether a fission-fusion bomb would be feasible
   at all were converted into believing that it was only a matter of time
   before both the USA and the USSR had developed multi-megaton weapons.
   Even Oppenheimer, who was originally opposed to the project, called the
   idea "technically sweet."
   The 10.4 Mt "Ivy Mike" shot of 1952 appeared to vindicate Teller's
   long-time advocacy for the hydrogen bomb.
   Enlarge
   The 10.4 Mt " Ivy Mike" shot of 1952 appeared to vindicate Teller's
   long-time advocacy for the hydrogen bomb.

   Though he had helped to come up with the design and had been a
   long-time proponent of the concept, Teller was not chosen to head the
   development project (his reputation of a thorny personality likely
   played a role in this). In 1952 he left Los Alamos and joined the newly
   established Livermore branch of the University of California Radiation
   Laboratory, which had been created largely through his urging. After
   the detonation of " Ivy Mike", the first thermonuclear weapon to
   utilize the Teller-Ulam configuration, on November 1, 1952, Teller
   became known in the press as the "father of the hydrogen bomb." Teller
   himself refrained from attending the test — he claimed not to feel
   welcome at the Pacific Proving Grounds — and instead saw its results on
   a seismograph in the basement of a hall in Berkeley. (Rhodes 1995)

   By analyzing the fallout from this test, the Soviets (led in their
   H-bomb work by Soviet scientist Andrei Sakharov) could have easily
   deduced that the new design had used compression as the key initiator.
   However this was later denied by the Soviet bomb researchers, who later
   claimed that they were not yet at that time organized to collect
   fallout data from U.S. tests. Because of official secrecy, little
   information about the bomb's development was released by the
   government, and press reports often attributed the entire weapon's
   design and development to Teller and his new Livermore Laboratory (when
   it was actually developed by Los Alamos).

   Many of Teller's colleagues were irritated that he seemed to enjoy
   taking full credit for something he had only a part in, and in
   response, with encouragement from Enrico Fermi, Teller authored an
   article titled "The Work of Many People," which appeared in Science
   magazine in February 1955, emphasizing that he was not alone in the
   weapon's development (he would later write in his memoirs that he had
   told a "white lie" in the 1955 article in order to "soothe ruffled
   feelings", claimed full credit for the invention).

   Teller was often known for getting engrossed in projects which were
   theoretically interesting but practically unfeasible (the classic
   "Super" was one such project.) About his work on the hydrogen bomb,
   Bethe said:

          "Nobody blamed Teller because the calculations of 1946 were
          wrong, especially because adequate computing machines were not
          available at Los Alamos. But he was blamed at Los Alamos for
          leading the laboratory, and indeed the whole country, into an
          adventurous programme on the basis of calculations, which he
          himself must have known to have been very incomplete."

   During the Manhattan Project, Teller also advocated for the development
   of a bomb using uranium hydride, which many of his fellow theorists
   said would be unlikely to work. At Livermore, Teller continued work on
   the hydride bomb, and the result was a dud. Ulam once wrote to a
   colleague about an idea he had shared with Teller: "Edward is full of
   enthusiasm about these possibilities; this is perhaps an indication
   they will not work." Fermi once said that Teller was the only
   monomaniac he knew who had several manias.

The Oppenheimer controversy

   Teller's testimony against Robert Oppenheimer in 1954 furthered his
   process of alienation from many of his former Los Alamos colleagues.
   Enlarge
   Teller's testimony against Robert Oppenheimer in 1954 furthered his
   process of alienation from many of his former Los Alamos colleagues.

   The rift between Teller and many of his colleagues was widened in 1954
   when he testified against Robert Oppenheimer, former head of Los Alamos
   and member of the Atomic Energy Commission, at Oppenheimer's security
   clearance hearing. Teller had clashed with Oppenheimer many times at
   Los Alamos over issues relating both to fission and fusion research,
   and during Oppenheimer's trial he was the only member of the scientific
   community to label Oppenheimer a security risk.

   Asked at the hearing by prosecutor Roger Robb whether he was planning
   "to suggest that Dr. Oppenheimer is disloyal to the United States,"
   Teller replied that:

          I do not want to suggest anything of the kind. I know
          Oppenheimer as an intellectually most alert and a very
          complicated person, and I think it would be presumptuous and
          wrong on my part if I would try in any way to analyze his
          motives. But I have always assumed, and I now assume that he is
          loyal to the United States. I believe this, and I shall believe
          it until I see very conclusive proof to the opposite.

   However, he was immediately asked whether he believed that Oppenheimer
   was a "security risk," to which he testified:

          In a great number of cases I have seen Dr. Oppenheimer act — I
          understood that Dr. Oppenheimer acted — in a way which for me
          was exceedingly hard to understand. I thoroughly disagreed with
          him in numerous issues and his actions frankly appeared to me
          confused and complicated. To this extent I feel that I would
          like to see the vital interests of this country in hands which I
          understand better, and therefore trust more. In this very
          limited sense I would like to express a feeling that I would
          feel personally more secure if public matters would rest in
          other hands.

   Teller also testified that Oppenheimer's opinion about the
   thermonuclear program seemed to be based more on the scientific
   feasibility of the weapon than anything else. He additionally testified
   that Oppenheimer's direction of Los Alamos was "a very outstanding
   achievement" both as a scientist and an administrator, lauding his
   "very quick mind" and that he made "just a most wonderful and excellent
   director."

   After this, however, he detailed ways in which he felt that Oppenheimer
   had hindered his efforts towards an active thermonuclear development
   program, and at length criticized Oppenheimer's decisions not to invest
   more work onto the question at different points in his career. The most
   damning piece of testimony, as seen by contemporaries and later
   historians, was his statement that:

          If it is a question of wisdom and judgment, as demonstrated by
          actions since 1945, then I would say one would be wiser not to
          grant clearance.

   Oppenheimer's security clearance was eventually stripped, and Teller
   was treated as a pariah by many of his former colleagues. In response,
   Teller began to run with a more military and governmental crowd,
   becoming the scientific darling of conservative politicians and
   thinkers for his advocacy of American scientific and technological
   supremacy. After the fact, Teller consistently denied that he was
   intending to damn Oppenheimer, and even claimed that he was attempting
   to exonerate him. Documentary evidence has suggested that this was
   likely not the case, however. Six days before the testimony, Teller met
   with an AEC liaison officer and suggested "deepening the charges" in
   his testimony.

Government work and political advocacy

   During the 1960s, Teller argued vigorously against the proposed nuclear
   test ban, testifying before Congress as well as on television.
   Enlarge
   During the 1960s, Teller argued vigorously against the proposed nuclear
   test ban, testifying before Congress as well as on television.

   Teller was Director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (
   1958- 1960), which he helped to found (along with Ernest O. Lawrence),
   and after that he continued as an Associate Director. He also served
   concurrently as a Professor of Physics at the University of California,
   Berkeley. He was a tireless advocate of a strong nuclear program and
   argued for continued testing and development — in fact, he stepped down
   from the directorship of Livermore so that he could better lobby
   against the proposed test ban. He testified against the test ban both
   before Congress as well as on television.

   After the Oppenheimer controversy, Teller became ostracized by much of
   the academic scientific community. He was however still quite welcome
   in the government and military science circles. Along with his
   traditional advocacy for nuclear energy development, a strong nuclear
   arsenal, and a vigorous nuclear testing program, he also helped to
   develop nuclear reactor safety standards and helped to design reactors
   in which a nuclear meltdown would be hypothetically impossible.

   In 1975 he retired from both the lab and Berkeley, and was named
   Director Emeritus of the Livermore Laboratory and appointed Senior
   Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

   Teller was also associated with the Council for National Policy, a
   semi-secret right-wing think-tank. He served on the Council's board of
   directors in 1982.

Operation Plowshare and Project Chariot

   One of the Chariot schemes involved chaining five thermonuclear devices
   to create the artificial harbor.
   Enlarge
   One of the Chariot schemes involved chaining five thermonuclear devices
   to create the artificial harbour.

   Teller was one of the strongest and best-known advocates for
   investigating non-military uses of nuclear explosives, known as
   Operation Plowshare. One of the most controversial projects he proposed
   was a plan to use a multi-megaton hydrogen bomb to dig a deep-water
   harbour more than a mile long and half a mile wide to use for shipment
   of resources from coal and oil fields near Point Hope, Alaska. The
   Atomic Energy Commission accepted Teller's proposal in 1958 and it was
   designated Project Chariot. While the AEC was scouting out the Alaskan
   site, and having withdrawn the land from the public domain, Teller
   publicly advocated the economic benefits of the plan, but was unable to
   convince local government leaders that the plan was financially viable.
   (O'Neill 1994)

   Other scientists criticized the project as being potentially unsafe for
   the local wildlife and the Inupiat people living near the designated
   area, who were not officially told of the plan until 1960.
   Additionally, it turned out that the harbour would be ice-bound for
   nine months out of the year. In the end, due to the financial
   infeasibility of the project and the concerns over radiation-related
   health issues, the project was cancelled in 1962.

   A related experiment which also had Teller's endorsement was a plan to
   extract oil from the Athabasca oil sands in northern Alberta with
   nuclear explosions. The plan actually received the endorsement of the
   Alberta government, but was rejected by the Government of Canada under
   Prime Minister John Diefenbaker. In addition to being opposed to having
   nuclear weapons in Canada, Diefenbaker was concerned that such a
   project would intensify Soviet espionage in Northern Canada.

Three Mile Island

   Teller suffered a heart attack in 1979, which he blamed on Jane Fonda;
   after the Three Mile Island accident, the actress had outspokenly
   lobbied against nuclear power while promoting her latest movie, The
   China Syndrome (a movie depicting a nuclear accident which had
   coincidentally been released only a little over a week before the
   actual incident.) In response, Teller acted quickly to lobby in favour
   of nuclear energy, testifying to its safety and reliability, and after
   such a flurry of activity suffered the attack. Teller authored a
   two-page spread in the Wall Street Journal which appeared on July 31,
   1979, under the headline "I was the only victim of Three-Mile Island",
   which opened with:

          "On May 7, a few weeks after the accident at Three-Mile Island,
          I was in Washington. I was there to refute some of that
          propaganda that Ralph Nader, Jane Fonda and their kind are
          spewing to the news media in their attempt to frighten people
          away from nuclear power. I am 71 years old, and I was working 20
          hours a day. The strain was too much. The next day, I suffered a
          heart attack. You might say that I was the only one whose health
          was affected by that reactor near Harrisburg. No, that would be
          wrong. It was not the reactor. It was Jane Fonda. Reactors are
          not dangerous."

   The next day, The New York Times ran an editorial criticizing the ad,
   noting that it was sponsored by Dresser Industries, the firm which had
   manufactured one of the defective valves which contributed to the Three
   Mile Island accident. (Broad 1992)

Strategic Defense Initiative

   Teller became a major lobbying force of the Strategic Defense
   Initiative to President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.
   Enlarge
   Teller became a major lobbying force of the Strategic Defense
   Initiative to President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

   In the 1980s, Teller began a strong campaign for what was later called
   the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), derided by critics as "Star
   Wars," the concept of using lasers or satellites to destroy incoming
   Russian ICBMs. Teller lobbied with government agencies—and got the
   sanction of President Ronald Reagan—for his plan to develop a system
   using elaborate satellites which used atomic weapons to fire X-ray
   lasers at incoming missiles— as part of a broader scientific research
   program into defenses against nuclear weapons. However, scandal erupted
   when Teller (and his associate Lowell Wood) were accused of
   deliberately overselling the program and perhaps had encouraged the
   dismissal of a laboratory director (Roy Woodruff) who had attempted to
   correct the error. (Broad 1992) His claims led to a joke which
   circulated in the scientific community, that a new unit of unfounded
   optimism was designated as the teller; one teller was so large that
   most events had to be measured in nanotellers or picotellers. Many
   prominent scientists argued that the system was futile. Bethe, along
   with IBM physicist Richard Garwin and Cornell University colleague Kurt
   Gottfried, wrote an article in Scientific American which analyzed the
   system and concluded that any putative enemy could disable such a
   system by the use of suitable decoys. The project's funding was
   eventually scaled back.

   Many scientists opposed strategic defense on moral or political rather
   than purely technical grounds. They argued that, even if an effective
   system could be produced, it would undermine the system of Mutually
   Assured Destruction (MAD) that had prevented all-out war between the
   western democracies and the communist bloc. An effective defense, they
   contended, would make such a war "winnable" and therefore more likely.

   The concept experienced a revival in the late 90's and early part of
   the twenty-first century, though. This was partially due to advancing
   technology, but mostly to the changing nature of the nuclear strategic
   environment. Instead of a stand-off between thousands of weapons
   deployed by two well-funded and highly advanced superpowers, the world
   had transitioned to a multi-polar world where many nations of varying
   wealth and political stability, deployed small numbers of nuclear
   weapons. In this context, nations able to afford only a handful of
   ICBM— or even one— could pose a major threat to the US. Furthermore, in
   the hands of political or religious extremists, the counterthreat of
   nuclear annihilation was perceived as less likely to deter potential
   attackers. Teller's plan offered a way to increase the risk for
   emerging nuclear powers contemplating a first-strike, while forcing
   nations with more economic and technological might to enter a costly
   arms race between defense and countermeasure. Under US President Bush,
   the missile defense program experienced a revitalization, and the US
   withdrew from the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty to pursue defenses
   against nuclear weapons.

   Despite (or perhaps because of) his hawkish reputation, Teller made a
   public point of noting that he regretted the use of the first atomic
   bombs on civilian cities during World War II. He further claimed that
   before the bombing of Hiroshima he had indeed lobbied Oppenheimer to
   use the weapons first in a "demonstration" which could be witnessed by
   the Japanese high-command and citizenry before using them to incur
   thousands of deaths. The "father of the hydrogen bomb" would use this
   quasi-anti-nuclear stance (he would say that he believed nuclear
   weapons to be unfortunate, but that the arms race was unavoidable due
   to the intractable nature of Communism) to promote technologies such as
   SDI, arguing that they were needed to make sure that nuclear weapons
   could never be used again (Better a shield than a sword was the title
   of one of his books on the subject).

   However, there is contradictory evidence. In the seventies of the
   twentieth century a letter of Teller to Szilard emerged, dated on July
   2nd, 1945:

   "Our only hope is in getting the facts of our results before the
   people. This might help convince everybody the next war would be fatal.
   For this purpose, actual combat-use might even be the best thing."

   Professor Barton Bernstein from Stanford University pointed out that
   Tellers claims are therefore very unconvicing.

Legacy

   Edward Teller in his later years.
   Enlarge
   Edward Teller in his later years.

   In his early career, Teller made many important contributions to
   nuclear and molecular physics, spectroscopy (the Jahn-Teller and
   Renner-Teller effects), and surface physics. His extension of Fermi's
   theory of beta decay (in the form of the so-called Gamow-Teller
   transitions) provided an important stepping stone in the applications
   of this theory. The Jahn-Teller effect and the BET theory have retained
   their original formulation and are still mainstays in physics and
   chemistry. Teller also made contributions to Thomas-Fermi theory, the
   precursor of density functional theory, a standard modern tool in the
   quantum mechanical treatment of complex molecules. In 1953, along with
   Nicholas Metropolis and Marshall Rosenbluth, Teller co-authored a paper
   which is a standard starting point for the applications of the Monte
   Carlo method to statistical mechanics.

   Teller's vigorous advocacy for strength through nuclear weapons,
   especially when so many of his wartime colleagues later expressed
   regret about the arms race, made him an easy target for the " mad
   scientist" stereotype (his accent and imposing eyebrows certainly did
   not help shake the image). In 1991 he was awarded one of the first Ig
   Nobel Prizes for Peace in recognition of his "lifelong efforts to
   change the meaning of peace as we know it". He was also rumored to be
   one of the inspirations for the character of Dr. Strangelove in Stanley
   Kubrick's 1964 satirical film of the same name (other inspirations have
   been speculated to be RAND theorist Herman Kahn, rocket scientist
   Wernher von Braun, and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara). In the
   aforementioned Scientific American interview from 1999, he was reported
   as having bristled at the question: "My name is not Strangelove. I
   don't know about Strangelove. I'm not interested in Strangelove. What
   else can I say?... Look. Say it three times more, and I throw you out
   of this office." Nobel Prize winning physicist Isidor I. Rabi once
   suggested that "It would have been a better world without Teller."

   Although he left Hungary decades ago, Teller never forgot his heritage
   or his language. After the fall of communism in Hungary in 1989, he
   made several visits to his country of origin, and paid careful
   attention to the political changes there.

   Teller died in Stanford, California on September 9, 2003. He was a
   fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American
   Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Nuclear
   Society. Among the honours he received were the Albert Einstein Award,
   the Enrico Fermi Award, and the National Medal of Science. He was also
   named as part of the group of "U.S. Scientists" who were Time
   magazine's People of the Year in 1960, and an asteroid, 5006 Teller, is
   named after him. He was awarded with the Presidential Medal of Freedom
   by President George W. Bush less than two months before his death.
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Teller"
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