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Edward Teller—A Life Dedicated to Science

Teller was born into a middle-class lawyer's family in Budapest, Hungary in 1908, and took his degree in chemical engineering at the University of Karlsruhe in Germany. With the rise of the Nazis, he left Germany, and from 1933–34 he participated in developing the new quantum physics in Copenhagen as a postdoctoral fellow, in the celebrated school of Niels Bohr. In February 1934, he married "Mici" (Augusta Maria) Harkanyi, the sister of a longtime friend.

After a period teaching at London City College in 1934, he was appointed Professor of Physics at George Washington University in Washington, DC in 1935, where he continued to work until 1941.

Prior to the announcement to the scientific community of the discovery of fission in 1939, Teller's research was entirely theoretical and had a wholly basic-science character. President Franklin Roosevelt's call-to-arms to the American scientific community as war broke out in Europe profoundly affected Teller, and he become involved in the applied nuclear physics studies then centered at Columbia University. It was Teller who drove Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner to Albert Einstein's summer home on Long Island in 1939, where Einstein signed a letter to President Roosevelt urging him to pursue atomic weapons research before the Nazis could preempt the field.

In recollections, Teller quipped that he suspected that the only reason he became a part of the trio urging Einstein to advise Roosevelt urgently to take action was "because I was the only one who knew how to drive and had a car to get us there." A half-year later, Teller personally pleaded successfully with the government for an initial grant of $6,000 in support of Fermi's nuclear reactor-directed studies at Columbia, which action served to launch what grew into the Manhattan Project.

His advocacy of competition in the national interest to ensure excellence in nuclear developments led to creation of the Livermore site of what was then called the University of California Radiation Laboratory in 1952, now the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It was Teller who strongly advocated maximally vigorous development of thermonuclear weaponry, epitomized by his famous, then-seemingly absurd promise to realize a warhead that could be launched on a long-range missile carried by a submarine. In later years, Teller loved to relate how his outraged Livermore subordinates initially insisted that he retract the promise, but then went on to swiftly develop a warhead of far more outstanding specifications than he has promised. Teller served as Laboratory director at Livermore for two years in the late '50s and thereafter as associate director for physics until his retirement in 1975.

He taught physics at the University of California, then created and chaired the Department of Applied Science at UC Davis' Livermore site. In 1975 he was named director emeritus of the Lab by the University of California, and was appointed senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, positions that he held until his death. In the 1980s Teller served as a determined advocate for the development of a ballistic missile defense system to protect the nation from nuclear attack. These efforts contributed to the end of the Cold War.

Teller has received numerous awards for his contributions to physics, his dedication to education, and his public life. He has published more than a dozen books on subjects ranging from energy policy and defense issues, to his own memoirs.

Get more information about...

• Audio and Video Clips
• Awards, Degrees, and Books
• Interview with Edward Teller
• Celebrating Edward Teller at 90
• Lawrence Livermore Timeline—Directors: Edward Teller

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