Edward Teller (1908-2003)
Teller is best known for the Teller-Ulam Invention which was crucial for the Super Bomb or the Hydrogen Bomb. Although Teller himself does not want to admit, Ulam's idea of multi-stage ignition made possible for Teller's team to come to the invention. (See Newsletter 52)
Teller was born in Hungary and educated in Germany. Like other bright Hungarians (such as von Neumann, Szilard, Wigner), he came to the United States and got involved in the Manhattan Project. Inspired by Enrico Fermi's suggestion, Teller was fascinated by the idea of the Super; and while most other members were busy with the works for the plutonium bomb in Los Alamos, he refused to work under Hans Bethe, and that's one of the causes for introducing the British team which included Klaus Fuchs, a spy for the Soviet Union.
After the War, when it turned out that the Soviet succeeded in the first experiment (1949) of the plutonium bomb (which was an exact copy of the American Fatman---the one exploded on Nagasaki, the crucial information being obtained through espionage), the scientific advisors headed by Oppenheimer considered the possibility of the Super and advised the President not to develop the Super, for technical and moral reasons. Against this, conservative physicists including Teller, Lawrence, and Alvarez made a campaign for the Super, together with such political figures as Lewis Strauss and Senator MacMahon, and the President Truman eventually decided to develop the Super, despite no one yet had any promising idea for its feasibility.
While the Los Alamos Laboratory was working for the Super after the Teller-Ulam Invention, Teller again did not get along well with other colleagues, and the Director Bradbury finally decided to ask Teller to leave, and the construction of the Mike (the first Super) was headed by another physicist whom Teller despised. But Teller was tough; he made another campaign for the second national laboratory for bomb research, and it was realized as the Lawrence-Livermore Lab in the Westcoast. And it is well known that in the famous Oppenheimer hearings, Teller's testimony played a rather curucial role for expelling Oppenheimer from the public offices; this, however, hurt Teller himself also.
During the Reagan administration, Teller again played a prominent role as an advocate for the "Star Wars" project (Strategic Defence Initiative) , but fortunately or unfortunately (for some), this idea received little national support. Two big countries have spent so much money on national defence and military equipment, and what was the overall consequence of this?
See my review of Teller's Memoirs
