Edward Teller (Hungarian:Teller Ede; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian-Americantheoretical physicist and chemical engineer who is known colloquially as "the father of thehydrogen bomb" and one of the creators of theTeller–Ulam design inspired byStanisław Ulam. He had a volatile personality, and was "driven by his megaton ambitions, had amessianic complex, and displayed autocratic behavior."[1] He devised a thermonuclear Alarm Clock bomb with a yield of 1000 MT (1 GT of TNT) and proposed delivering it by boat or submarine to incinerate a continent.[1]
Born inAustria-Hungary in 1908, Teller emigrated to the US in the 1930s, one of the many so-called"Martians", a group of Hungarian scientist émigrés. He made numerous contributions tonuclear andmolecular physics,spectroscopy, andsurface physics. His extension ofEnrico Fermi's theory ofbeta decay, in the form ofGamow–Teller transitions, provided an important stepping stone in its application, while theJahn–Teller effect and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller(BET) theory have retained their original formulation and are mainstays in physics and chemistry.[2] Teller analyzed his problems using basic principles of physics and often discussed with his cohorts to make headway through difficult problems. This was seen when he worked with Stanislaw Ulam to get a workable thermonuclear fusion bomb design, but later temperamentally dismissed Ulam's aid.Herbert York stated that Teller utilized Ulam's general idea of compressive heating to start thermonuclear fusion to generate his own sketch of a workable "Super" bomb.[1] Before Ulam's idea, Teller's classical Super was essentially a system for heating uncompressed liquid deuterium to the point, Teller hoped, that it would sustain thermonuclear burning.[1] It was, in essence, a simple idea from physical principles, which Teller pursued with a ferocious tenacity, even if he was wrong and shown that it would not work. To get support from Washington for his Super weapon project, Teller proposed a thermonuclearradiation implosion experiment as the "George" shot ofOperation Greenhouse.[1]
Teller continued to find support from the US government and military research establishment, particularly for his advocacy fornuclear power development, a strong nuclear arsenal, and a vigorousnuclear testing program. In his later years, he advocated controversial technological solutions to military and civilian problems, including a plan to excavate an artificial harbor inAlaska using athermonuclear explosive in what was calledProject Chariot, andRonald Reagan'sStrategic Defense Initiative. Teller was a recipient of theEnrico Fermi Award andAlbert Einstein Award. He died in 2003, at 95.
Ede Teller was born on January 15, 1908, inBudapest, then part ofAustria-Hungary, into aJewish family. His parents were Ilona (née Deutsch),[4][5] a pianist, and Miksa Teller, an attorney.[6] He attended theMinta Gymnasium in Budapest.[7] Teller was an agnostic. "Religion was not an issue in my family", he later wrote, "indeed, it was never discussed. My only religious training came because the Minta required that all students take classes in their respective religions. My family celebrated one holiday, theDay of Atonement, when we all fasted. Yet my father said prayers for his parents on Saturdays and on all the Jewish holidays. The idea of God that I absorbed was that it would be wonderful if He existed: We needed Him desperately but had not seen Him in many thousands of years."[8] Teller was alate talker, but he became very interested in numbers and, for fun, calculated large numbers in his head.[9]
From 1926 to 1928, Teller studied mathematics and chemistry at theUniversity of Karlsruhe, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Science inchemical engineering.[11][12] He once stated that the person who was responsible for his becoming a physicist wasHerman Mark, who was a visiting professor,[13] after hearing lectures on molecular spectroscopy where Mark made it clear to him that it was new ideas in physics that were radically changing the frontier of chemistry.[14] Mark was an expert inpolymer chemistry, a field which is essential to understanding biochemistry, and Mark taught him about the leading breakthroughs inquantum physics made byLouis de Broglie, among others. It was his exposure to Mark's lectures that initially motivated Teller to switch to physics.[15] After informing his father of his intent to switch, his father was so concerned that he traveled to visit him and speak with his professors at the school. While a degree in chemical engineering was a sure path to a well-paying job at chemical companies, there was no such clear-cut route for a career with a degree in physics. He was not privy to the discussions his father had with his professors, but the result was that he got his father's permission to become a physicist.[16]
Teller then attended theUniversity of Munich, where he studied physics underArnold Sommerfeld. In 1928, while still a student inMunich, he fell under a streetcar and his right foot was nearly severed. For the rest of his life, he walked with a limp, and on occasion he wore aprosthetic foot.[17][18] Thepainkillers he was taking were interfering with his thinking, so he decided to stop taking them, instead using his willpower to deal with the pain, including use of theplacebo effect, by which he convinced himself that he had taken painkillers rather than water.[19]Werner Heisenberg said that it was the hardiness of Teller's spirit, rather thanstoicism, that allowed him to cope so well with the accident.[20]
The Hungarian passport Teller carried when he entered the United States in 1935.
Mici had been a student inPittsburgh and wanted to return to the United States. Her chance came in 1935, when, thanks to George Gamow, Teller was invited to the United States to become a professor of physics atGeorge Washington University, where he worked with Gamow until 1941.[28] At George Washington University in 1937, Teller predicted theJahn–Teller effect, which distorts molecules in certain situations; this affects thechemical reactions of metals, and in particular the coloration of certain metallic dyes.[29] Teller andHermann Arthur Jahn analyzed it as a piece of purely mathematical physics. In collaboration withStephen Brunauer andPaul Hugh Emmett, Teller also made an important contribution tosurface physics and chemistry: the so-calledBrunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) isotherm.[30] Teller and Mici becamenaturalized citizens of the United States on March 6, 1941.[31]
WhenWorld War II began, Teller wanted to contribute to the war effort. On the advice of the well-knownCaltechaerodynamicist and fellow HungarianémigréTheodore von Kármán, Teller collaborated with his friendHans Bethe in developing a theory of shock-wave propagation. In later years, their explanation of the behavior of the gas behind such a wave proved valuable to scientists who were studying missile re-entry.[33]
In 1942, Teller was invited to be part ofRobert Oppenheimer's summer planning seminar at theUniversity of California, Berkeley, on the origins of theManhattan Project, the US effort to develop the firstnuclear weapons. A few weeks earlier, Teller had been meeting with his friend and colleagueEnrico Fermi about the prospects ofatomic warfare, and Fermi had nonchalantly suggested that perhaps a weapon based onnuclear fission could be used to set off an even largernuclear fusion reaction. Even though he initially explained to Fermi why he thought the idea would not work, Teller was fascinated by the possibility and was quickly bored with the idea of "just" an atomic bomb, even though this was not yet anywhere near completion. At the Berkeley session, Teller diverted the discussion from the fission weapon to the possibility of a fusion weapon—what he called the "Super", an early conception of thehydrogen bomb.[34][35]
Arthur Compton, the chairman of theUniversity of Chicago physics department, coordinated theuranium research ofColumbia University,Princeton University, the University of Chicago, and the University of California, Berkeley. To remove disagreement and duplication, Compton transferred the scientists to theMetallurgical Laboratory at Chicago.[36] Even though Teller and Mici were now American citizens, they had relatives in enemy countries, so Teller did not at first go to Chicago.[37] In early 1943, construction of theLos Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico began. With Oppenheimer as its director, the laboratory's purpose was to design anatomic bomb. Teller moved there in March 1943.[38] In Los Alamos, he annoyed his neighbors by playing piano late at night.[39]
Teller became part of the Theoretical (T) Division.[40][41] He was given a secret identity of Ed Tilden.[42] He was irked at being passed over as its head; the job was instead given toHans Bethe. Oppenheimer had him investigate unusual approaches to building fission weapons, such asautocatalysis, in which the efficiency of the bomb would increase as thenuclear chain reaction progressed, but proved to be impractical.[41] He also investigated usinguranium hydride instead of uranium metal, but its efficiency turned out to be "negligible or less".[43] He 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 proved to be difficult enough).[40][41] On a visit to New York, he askedMaria Goeppert-Mayer to carry out calculations on the Super for him. She confirmed Teller's own results: the Super was not going to work.[44]
A special group was established under Teller in March 1944 to investigate the mathematics of animplosion-type nuclear weapon.[45] It too ran into difficulties. Because of his interest in the Super, Teller did not work as hard on the implosion calculations as Bethe wanted. These too were originally low-priority tasks, but the discovery of spontaneous fission inplutonium byEmilio Segrè's group gave the implosion bomb increased importance. In June 1944, at Bethe's request, Oppenheimer moved Teller out of T Division and placed him in charge of a special group responsible for the Super, reporting directly to Oppenheimer. He was replaced byRudolf Peierls from theBritish Mission, who in turn brought inKlaus Fuchs, who was later revealed to be aSoviet spy.[46][44] Teller's Super group became part of Fermi's F Division when he joined the Los Alamos Laboratory in September 1944.[46] It includedStanislaw Ulam, Jane Roberg,Geoffrey Chew, Harold and Mary Argo,[47] andMaria Goeppert-Mayer.[48]
Teller made valuable contributions to bomb research, especially in the elucidation of the implosion mechanism. He was the first to propose thesolid pit design that was eventually successful. This design became known as a "Christy pit", after the physicistRobert F. Christy who made it a reality.[49][50][51][52] Teller was one of the few scientists to watch (with eye protection) theTrinity nuclear test in July 1945, rather than follow orders to lie on the ground with backs turned. He later said that the atomic flash "was as if I had pulled open the curtain in a dark room and broad daylight streamed in".[53]
In the days before and after the first demonstration of a nuclear weapon (theTrinity test in July 1945), HungarianLeo Szilard circulated theSzílard petition, which argued thata demonstration to the Japanese of the new weapon should occur beforeactual use on Japan, and that the weapons should never be used on people. In response to Szilard's petition, Teller consulted his friend Robert Oppenheimer. Teller believed that Oppenheimer was a natural leader and could help him with such a formidable political problem. Oppenheimer reassured Teller that the nation's fate should be left to the sensible politicians in Washington. Bolstered by Oppenheimer's influence, he decided not to sign the petition.[54]
Teller therefore penned a letter in response to Szilard that read:
I am not really convinced of your objections. I do not feel that there is any chance to outlaw any one weapon. If we have a slim chance of survival, it lies in the possibility to get rid of wars. The more decisive a weapon is the more surely it will be used in any real conflict and no agreements will help. Our only hope is in getting the facts of our results before the people. This might help to convince everybody that the next war would be fatal. For this purpose actual combat-use might even be the best thing.[55]
On reflection on this letter years later, when he was writing his memoirs, Teller wrote:
First, Szilard was right. As scientists who worked on producing the bomb, we bore a special responsibility. Second, Oppenheimer was right. We did not know enough about the political situation to have a valid opinion. Third, what we should have done but failed to do was to work out the technical changes required for demonstrating the bomb [very high] over Tokyo and submit that information to President Truman.[56]
Unknown to Teller at the time, four of his colleagues were solicited by the then-secret May to June 1945Interim Committee. It is this organization that ultimately decided on how the new weapons should initially be used. The committee's four-memberScientific Panel was led by Oppenheimer, and concluded immediate military use on Japan was the best option:
The opinions of our scientific colleagues on the initial use of these weapons are not unanimous: they range from the proposal of a purely technical demonstration to that of the military application best designed to induce surrender ... Others emphasize the opportunity of saving American lives by immediate military use ... We find ourselves closer to these latter views; we can propose no technical demonstration likely to bring an end to the war; we see no acceptable alternative to direct military use.[57]
Teller later learned of Oppenheimer's solicitation and his role in the Interim Committee's decision to drop the bombs, having secretly endorsed an immediate military use of the new weapons. This was contrary to the impression that Teller had received when he had personally asked Oppenheimer about the Szilard petition: that the nation's fate should be left to the sensible politicians in Washington. Following Teller's discovery of this, his relationship with his advisor began to deteriorate.[54]
In 1990, the historianBarton Bernstein argued that it is an "unconvincing claim" by Teller that he was a "covert dissenter" to the use of the bomb.[58] In his 2001Memoirs, Teller claims that he did lobby Oppenheimer, but that Oppenheimer had convinced him that he should take no action and that the scientists should leave military questions in the hands of the military; Teller claims he was not aware that Oppenheimer and other scientists were being consulted as to the actual use of the weapon and implies that Oppenheimer was being hypocritical.[59]
Despite an offer fromNorris Bradbury, who had replaced Oppenheimer as the director of Los Alamos in November 1945 to become the head of the Theoretical (T) Division, Teller left Los Alamos on February 1, 1946, to return to the University of Chicago as a professor and close associate of Fermi andMaria Goeppert Mayer.[60] Goeppert-Mayer's work on the internal structure of the elements would earn her the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963.[61]
On April 18–20, 1946, Teller participated in a conference at Los Alamos to review the wartime work on the Super. The properties of thermonuclear fuels such asdeuterium and the possible design of a hydrogen bomb were discussed. It was concluded that Teller's assessment of a hydrogen bomb had been too favorable, and that both the quantity of deuterium needed, as well as the radiation losses duringdeuterium burning, would shed doubt on its workability. Addition of expensivetritium 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.[62][63]
At the end of the conference, despite opposition by some members such asRobert 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. Fuchs also participated in this conference and transmitted this information to Moscow. WithJohn von Neumann, he contributed the idea of using implosion to ignite the Super. 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, as it would almost certainly delay their progress on it.[62]
Classified paper by Teller and Ulam on March 9, 1951:On Heterocatalytic Detonations I: Hydrodynamic Lenses and Radiation Mirrors, in which they proposed their revolutionary new design, staged implosion, the secret of the hydrogen bomb.
The Teller–Ulam design kept the fission and fusion fuel physically separated from one another, and used X-rays from the primary device "reflected" off the surrounding casing to compress the secondary.
Teller returned to Los Alamos in 1950 to work on the project. He insisted on involving more theorists, but many of Teller's prominent colleagues, like Fermi and Oppenheimer, were sure that the project of the H-bomb was technically infeasible and politically undesirable. None of the available designs was yet workable.[65] However, Soviet scientists who had worked on their own hydrogen bomb have claimed that they developed it independently.[66]
In 1950, calculations by the Polish mathematicianStanislaw Ulam and his collaboratorCornelius Everett, along with confirmations by Fermi, had shown that not only was Teller's earlier estimate of the quantity oftritium needed for the reaction to begin too low, but that even with more tritium, the energy loss in the fusion process would be too great to enable the fusion reaction to propagate. In 1951, Teller and Ulam made a breakthrough and invented a new design, proposed in a classified March 1951 paper,On Heterocatalytic Detonations I: Hydrodynamic Lenses and Radiation Mirrors, for a practical megaton-range H-bomb. The exact contribution provided respectively from Ulam and Teller to what became known as theTeller–Ulam design is not definitively known in the public domain, and the exact contributions of each and how the final idea was arrived upon have been a point of dispute in both public and classified discussions since the early 1950s.[67]
In an interview withScientific 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 had 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."[10]
The issue is controversial. Bethe considered Teller's contribution to the invention of the H-bomb a true innovation as early as 1952,[68] and referred to his work as a "stroke of genius" in 1954.[69] In both cases, Bethe emphasized Teller's role as a way of stressing that the development of the H-bomb could not have been hastened by additional support or funding, and Teller greatly disagreed with Bethe's assessment. Other scientists (antagonistic to Teller, such asJ. Carson Mark) have claimed that Teller would have never gotten any closer without the assistance of Ulam and others.[70] Ulam himself claimed that Teller only produced a "more generalized" version of Ulam's original design.[71]
A view of the Ivy-Mike "SAUSAGE" device; the world's first ever fully-fledged thermonuclear device, with its instrumentation and cryogenic equipment attached. The long pipes were for measurement purposes; their function was to transmit the first radiation from the "primary" and "secondary" stages (known as "Teller light") to instruments just as the device was detonated, before being destroyed in the explosion. The man seated lower right shows scale.
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 theX-rays produced by the fission bomb to first compress the fusion fuel (by a process known as "radiation implosion") before igniting it. Ulam's idea seems to have been to use mechanical shock from the primary to encourage fusion in the secondary, while Teller quickly realized that X-rays from the primary would do the job much more symmetrically. Some members of the laboratory (J. Carson Mark in particular) later expressed the opinion that the idea to use the X-rays would have eventually occurred to anyone working on the physical processes involved, and that the obvious reason why Teller thought of it right away was because he was already working on the "Greenhouse" tests for the spring of 1951, in which the effect of X-rays from a fission bomb on a mixture of deuterium and tritium was going to be investigated.[67]
Priscilla Johnson McMillan in her bookThe Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer: And the Birth of the Modern Arms Race, writes that Teller "concealed the role" of Ulam, and that only "radiation implosion" was Teller's idea. Teller even refused to sign the patent application, because it would need Ulam's signature.Thomas Powers writes that "of course the bomb designers all knew the truth, and many considered Teller the lowest, most contemptible kind of offender in the world of science, a stealer of credit".[72]
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 that had been so long sought. Those who had previously 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 US and the USSR had developedmulti-megaton weapons. Even Oppenheimer, who was originally opposed to the project, called the idea "technically sweet".[73]
The successful "Ivy Mike" shot of 1952; the world's first fully-fledged thermonuclear explosion, appeared to vindicate Teller's long-time advocacy for thehydrogen 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 for a thorny personality likely played a role in this). In 1952, he left Los Alamos and joined the newly establishedLivermore branch of theUniversity of California Radiation Laboratory, which had been created largely through his urging. After the detonation ofIvy 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 thePacific Proving Grounds—and instead saw its results on aseismograph at Berkeley.[74]
There was an opinion that by analyzing the fallout from this test, the Soviets (led in their H-bomb work byAndrei Sakharov) could have deciphered the new American design. However, this was later denied by the Soviet bomb researchers.[75] 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).[66]
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 inScience 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 to "soothe ruffled feelings" and claimed full credit for the invention.[76][77]
Teller was known for getting engrossed in projects which were theoretically interesting but practically infeasible (the classic "Super" was one such project.)[39] About his work on the hydrogen bomb, Bethe said:
Nobody will blame Teller because the calculations of 1946 were wrong, especiallybecause adequate computing machines were not then available. But he was blamed at Los Alamos for leading the Laboratory, and indeed the whole country, into an adventurous program on the basis of calculations which he himself must have known to have been very incomplete.[78]
During the Manhattan Project, Teller advocated the development of a bomb using uranium hydride, which many of his fellow theorists said would be unlikely to work.[79] At Livermore, Teller continued work on theuranium hydride bomb, and the result was a dud.[80] 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."[81] Fermi once said that Teller was the onlymonomaniac he knew who had severalmanias.[82]
Carey Sublette of Nuclear Weapon Archive argues that Ulam came up with the radiation implosion compression design of thermonuclear weapons, but that, on the other hand, Teller has gotten little credit for being the first to proposefusion boosting in 1945, which is essential for miniaturization and reliability and is used in all of today's nuclear weapons.[83]
In the early 1950s Edward Teller proposed projectSundial at a meeting of the General Advisory Committee of theAtomic Energy Commission, the bomb was intended to have a yield of 10 gigatons of TNT, while its counterpart, Gnomon, was intended to have a yield of 1 gigaton. Neither device was ever built or tested.
Teller became controversial in 1954 when he testified against Oppenheimer atOppenheimer'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 hearing, he was the only member of the scientific community to state that Oppenheimer should not be granted security clearance.[84]Asked at the hearing byAtomic Energy Commission (AEC) attorneyRoger 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.[85]
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.[69]
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".[69]
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, saying: "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."[69]
By recasting a difference of judgment over the merits of the early work on the hydrogen bomb project into a matter of a security risk, Teller effectively damned Oppenheimer in a field where security was necessarily of paramount concern. Teller's testimony thereby rendered Oppenheimer vulnerable to charges by a Congressional aide that he was a Soviet spy, which destroyed Oppenheimer's career.[86]
Oppenheimer's security clearance was revoked after the hearings. Most of Teller's former colleagues disapproved of his testimony, and he was ostracized by much of the scientific community.[84] After the fact, Teller consistently denied that he was intending to damn Oppenheimer, and even claimed that he was attempting to exonerate him. However, documentary evidence has suggested that this was likely not the case. Six days before the testimony, Teller met with an AEC liaison officer and suggested "deepening the charges" in his testimony.[87]
Teller always insisted that his testimony had not significantly harmed Oppenheimer. In 2002, Teller contended that Oppenheimer was "not destroyed" by the security hearing but "no longer asked to assist in policy matters". He claimed his words were an overreaction because he had only just learned of Oppenheimer's failure to immediately report an approach byHaakon Chevalier, who had approached Oppenheimer to help the Russians. Teller said that, in hindsight, he would have responded differently.[84]
HistorianRichard Rhodes said that in his opinion, it was already a foregone conclusion that Oppenheimer would have his security clearance revoked by then AEC chairmanLewis Strauss, regardless of Teller's testimony. However, as Teller's testimony was the most damning, he was singled out and blamed for the hearing's ruling, losing friends due to it, such asRobert Christy, who refused to shake his hand in one infamous incident. This was emblematic of his later treatment, which resulted in him being forced into the role of an outcast of the physics community, thus leaving him little choice but to align himself with industrialists.[88]
After the Oppenheimer controversy, Teller became ostracized by much of the scientific community, but was 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 had helped to developnuclear reactor safety standards as the chair of the Reactor Safeguard Committee to the AEC in the late 1940s,[89] and in the late 1950s headed an effort atGeneral Atomics which designedresearch reactors in which anuclear meltdown would be impossible. TheTRIGA (Training, Research, Isotopes, General Atomic) has been built and used in hundreds of hospitals and universities worldwide formedical isotope production and research.[90]
Teller promoted increased defense spending to counter the perceived Soviet missile threat. He was a signatory to the 1958 report by the military sub-panel of theRockefeller Brothers Fund (RFB)Special Studies Project, which called for a $3 billion annual increase in America's military budget.[91]
In 1956, he attended theProject Nobskaanti-submarine warfare conference, where discussion ranged fromoceanography to nuclear weapons. In the course of discussing a small nuclear warhead for theMark 45 torpedo, he started a discussion on the possibility of developing a physically small one-megaton nuclear warhead for thePolaris missile. His counterpart in the discussion,J. Carson Mark from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, at first insisted it could not be done. However, Dr. Mark eventually stated that a half-megaton warhead of small enough size could be developed. This yield, roughly thirty times that of theHiroshima bomb, was enough forChief of Naval Operations AdmiralArleigh Burke, who was present in person, and Navy strategic missile development shifted fromJupiter to Polaris by the end of the year.[92]
He was Director of theLawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which he helped to found withErnest O. Lawrence, from 1958 to 1960, and after that he continued as an associate director. He chaired the committee that founded theSpace Sciences Laboratory at Berkeley. He also served concurrently as a professor of physics at theUniversity of California, Berkeley.[93] 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 betterlobby against the proposedtest ban. He testified against the test ban both before Congress as well as on television.[94] Teller was involved with theCitizens Committee for a Free Cuba, an anti-Castro organisation formed in the 1960s.[95]
Teller was one of the first prominent people to raise the danger ofclimate change, driven by the burning offossil fuels. At an address to the membership of theAmerican Chemical Society in December 1957, Teller warned that the large amount of carbon-based fuel that had been burnt since the mid-19th century was increasing the concentration ofcarbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which would "act in the same way as a greenhouse and will raise the temperature at the surface", and that he had calculated that if the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased by 10% "an appreciable part of the polar ice might melt".[98]
I am to talk to you about energy in the future. I will start by telling you why I believe that the energy resources of the past must be supplemented. ... And this, strangely, is the question of contaminating the atmosphere. ... Whenever you burn conventional fuel, you create carbon dioxide. ... Carbon dioxide has a strange property. It transmits visible light but it absorbs the infrared radiation which is emitted from the earth. Its presence in the atmosphere causes agreenhouse effect. ... It has been calculated that a temperature rise corresponding to a 10 per cent increase in carbon dioxide will be sufficient to melt the icecap and submerge New York. All the coastal cities would be covered, and since a considerable percentage of the human race lives in coastal regions, I think that this chemical contamination is more serious than most people tend to believe.
One of theChariot schemes involved chaining five thermonuclear devices to create the artificial harbor.
Teller was one of the strongest and best-known advocates for investigatingnon-military uses of nuclear explosives, which the United States explored underOperation Plowshare. One of the most controversial projects he proposed was a plan to use a multi-megaton hydrogen bomb to dig a deep-water harbor more than a mile long and half a mile wide to use for the shipment of resources from coal and oil fields throughPoint Hope, Alaska. TheAtomic Energy Commission accepted Teller's proposal in 1958, and it was designatedProject 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.[101]
Other scientists criticized the project as being potentially unsafe for the local wildlife and theInupiat people living near the designated area, who were not officially told of the plan until March 1960.[102][103] Additionally, it turned out that the harbor 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 abandoned in 1962.[104]
A related experiment, which also had Teller's endorsement, was a plan to extract oil from thetar sands in northernAlberta with nuclear explosions, titledProject Oilsands. The plan actually received the endorsement of the Alberta government, but was rejected by theGovernment of Canada under Prime MinisterJohn Diefenbaker, who was opposed to having any nuclear weapons in Canada. After Diefenbaker was out of office, Canada went on to have nuclear weapons, from a USnuclear sharing agreement, from 1963 to 1984.[105][106]
Teller also proposed the use of nuclear bombs to prevent damage from powerful hurricanes. He argued that when conditions in the Atlantic Ocean are right for the formation of hurricanes, the heat generated by well-placed nuclear explosions could trigger several small hurricanes, rather than waiting for nature to build one large one.[107]
For some twenty years, Teller advised Israel on nuclear matters in general, and on the building of a hydrogen bomb in particular.[108] In 1952, Teller and Oppenheimer had a long meeting withDavid Ben-Gurion in Tel Aviv, telling him that the best way to accumulate plutonium was to burn natural uranium in a nuclear reactor. Starting in 1964, a connection between Teller and Israel was made by the physicistYuval Ne'eman, who had similar political views. Between 1964 and 1967, Teller visited Israel six times, lecturing atTel Aviv University, and advising the chiefs of Israel's scientific-security circle as well as prime ministers and cabinet members.[109]
In 1967, when the Israeli nuclear program was nearing completion, Teller informed Neeman that he was going to tell theCIA that Israel had built nuclear weapons, and explain that it was justified by the background of theSix-Day War. After Neeman cleared it with Prime MinisterLevi Eshkol, Teller briefed the head of the CIA's Office of Science and Technology,Carl Duckett. It took a year for Teller to convince the CIA that Israel had obtainednuclear capability; the information then went through CIA DirectorRichard Helms to the president at that time,Lyndon B. Johnson. Teller also persuaded them to end the American attempts to inspect theNegev Nuclear Research Center in Dimona. In 1976, Duckett testified inCongress before theNuclear Regulatory Commission that, after receiving information from an "American scientist", he drafted aNational Intelligence Estimate on Israel's nuclear capability.[110]
In the 1980s, Teller again visited Israel to advise theIsraeli government on building a nuclear reactor.[111] Three decades later, Teller confirmed that it was during his visits that he concluded that Israel had nuclear weapons. After conveying the matter to the US government, Teller reportedly said: "They [Israel]have it, and they were clever enough to trust their research and not totest, they know that to test would get them into trouble."[110]
Teller had a heart attack in 1979, and blamed it onJane Fonda, who had starred inThe China Syndrome, which depicted a fictional reactor accident and was released less than two weeks before theThree Mile Island accident. She spoke out againstnuclear power while promoting the film. After the accident, Teller acted quickly to lobby in defence of nuclear energy, testifying to its safety and reliability, and soon after one flurry of activity, he suffered the attack. He signed a two-page-spread ad in the July 31, 1979, issue ofThe Washington Post with the headline "I was the only victim of Three-Mile Island".[112] It 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 thatRalph 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.[113]
In the 1980s, Teller began a strong campaign for what was later called theStrategic Defense Initiative (SDI), derided by critics as "Star Wars", the concept of using ground and satellite-based lasers, particle beams, and missiles to destroy incoming SovietICBMs. Teller lobbied with government agencies—and got the approval of PresidentRonald Reagan—for a plan to develop a system using elaboratesatellites which used atomic weapons to fireX-ray lasers at incoming missiles—as part of a broader scientific research program into defenses against nuclear weapons.[114]
Scandal erupted when Teller (and his associateLowell Wood) was accused of deliberately overselling the program and perhaps encouraging the dismissal of a laboratory director (Roy Woodruff) who had attempted to correct the error.[115] 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.[116]
Many prominent scientists argued that the system was futile.Hans Bethe, along withIBM physicistRichard Garwin andCornell University colleagueKurt Gottfried, wrote an article inScientific American which analyzed the system and concluded that any putative enemy could disable such a system by the use of suitable decoys that would cost a very small fraction of the SDI program.[117]
In 1987, Teller published a book entitledBetter a Shield than a Sword, which supportedcivil defense andactive protection systems. His views on the role of lasers in SDI were published and are available in two 1986–87 laser conference proceedings.[118][119]
Following the 1994Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet impacts with Jupiter, Teller proposed to a collective of US and Russian ex-Cold War weapons designers in a 1995 planetary defense workshop atLawrence Livermore National Laboratory, that they collaborate to design a1 gigaton nuclear explosive device, which would be equivalent to the kinetic energy of a 1 km diameter asteroid.[120][121][122] In order to safeguard the earth, the theoretical 1 Gt device would weigh about 25–30 tons—light enough to be lifted on the RussianEnergia rocket—and could be used to instantaneously vaporize a 1 km asteroid, or divert the paths ofextinction event class asteroids (greater than 10 km in diameter) with a few months' notice; with 1-year notice, at an interception location no closer thanJupiter, it would also be capable of dealing with the even rarershort period comets which can come out of theKuiper belt and transit past Earth orbit within 2 years. For comets of this class, with a maximum estimated 100 km diameter,Charon served as the hypothetical threat.[120][121][122]
Edward Teller in his later yearsAppearing on British television discussionAfter Dark in 1987
Teller died inStanford, California on September 9, 2003, at the age of 95.[39] He had suffered astroke two days before and had long been experiencing several conditions related to his advanced age.[123]
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. In 1991, he was awarded one of the firstIg 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 ofDr. Strangelove inStanley Kubrick's 1964satirical film of the same name.[39] In the aforementionedScientific 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."[10]
Nobel Prize-winning physicistIsidor I. Rabi once suggested that "It would have been a better world without Teller."[124]
In 1981, Teller became a founding member of theWorld Cultural Council.[125] A wish for his 100th birthday, made around the time of his 90th, was for Lawrence Livermore's scientists to give him "excellent predictions—calculations and experiments—about the interiors of the planets".[20]
His final paper, published posthumously, advocated the construction of a prototypeliquid fluoride thorium reactor.[134][135] The genesis and impetus for this last paper was recounted by the co-author Ralph Moir in 2007.[136]
^Edward Teller Facts, quote: "Leaving Hungary because of anti-Semitism, Teller went to Germany to study chemistry and mathematics at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology from 1926 to 1928. A lecture he heard by Herman Mark on the new science of molecular spectroscopy made a lasting impression on him: "He [Mark] made it clear that new ideas in physics had changed chemistry into an important part of the forefront of physics."
^Edward Teller – Wave-particle duality sparked a fascination with physics (segment 16 of 147), June 1996 interview with John H. Nuckolls, former director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (posted on 24 January 2008) Alternate source video (uploaded to Web of Stories YouTube channel on Sep 27, 2017) Quote: "This theory [of polymer chemistry, and its relation to quantum physics] managed to make in me a big change from an interest in mathematics to an interest in physics."
^Edward Teller – Jumping off the moving train (segment 20 of 147), June 1996 interview with John H. Nuckolls, former director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (posted on January 24, 2008) (uploaded to Web of Stories YouTube channel on September 27, 2017)
^"Edward Teller to Leo Szilard"(PDF). Nuclear Secrecy blog. July 2, 1945.Archived(PDF) from the original on October 9, 2022. RetrievedNovember 15, 2015. Copy in the J. Robert Oppenheimer papers (MS35188), Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Box 71, Folder, Teller, Edward, 1942–1963
^"Essay Review-From the A-Bomb to Star Wars: Edward Teller's History. Better A Shield Than a Sword: Perspectives on Defense and Technology".Technology and Culture.31 (4): 848. October 1990.
^Matthews, M.A. (October 8, 1959). "The Earth's Carbon Cycle".New Scientist.6:644–646.
^Nevins, Allan; Dunlop, Robert G.; Teller, Edward; Mason, Edward S.; Hoover, Herbert, Jr.; et al. (1960).Columbia University, Graduate School of Business (ed.).Energy and Man: A Symposium. Appleton-Century-Crofts.{{cite conference}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^This quote has been primarily attributed to Rabi in many news sources (see, e.g.,McKie, Robin (May 2, 2004)."Megaton megalomaniac".The Observer. but in a few reputable sources it has also been attributed to Hans Bethe (i.e. inHerken 2002,notes to the Epilogue.
^Borcherds, P. (2003). "Review ofConversations on the Dark Secrets of Physics by Edward Teller with Wendy Teller and Wilson Talley".European Journal of Physics.24 (4):495–496.doi:10.1088/0143-0807/24/4/702.S2CID250893374.
Heisenberg Sabotaged the Atomic Bomb (Heisenberg hat die Atombombe sabotiert) an interview in German with Edward Teller in: Michael Schaaf:Heisenberg, Hitler und die Bombe. Gespräche mit Zeitzeugen Berlin 2001,ISBN3928186604.
Szilard, Leo. (1987)Toward a Livable World: Leo Szilard and the Crusade for Nuclear Arms Control. Cambridge: MIT Press.ISBN978-0262192606
Groves, Leslie R. (1983) [1962].Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project. Boston; Massachusetts: Da Capo Press; Perseus Group.ISBN0-306-80189-2. paperback reprint, with December 1982 introduction by Edward Teller
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