Teller, Edward

Teller, Edward, 1908–2003, American physicist, b. Budapest, Hungary, Ph.D. Univ. of Leipzig, 1930, where he studied under Werner Heisenberg. Fleeing the Nazis, he came to the United States in 1935 and was naturalized in 1941. He was (1935–41) a professor of physics at George Washington Univ. and during World War II he worked on atomic bomb research at a number of facilities. Later he was (1946–52) professor of physics at the Univ. of Chicago. He was also associated (1949–51) with the thermonuclear research program of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. From 1952, Teller was professor of physics at the Univ. of California and director of the Livermore division of its radiation laboratory. In 1960 he resigned from his laboratory post to devote his time to teaching and research; he retired in 1975.

Teller worked on the physics of the hydrogen bomb from 1941 forward and was instrumental in making possible the first successful U.S. explosion of the device on Nov. 1, 1952. Robert Oppenheimer had opposed the develop of the bomb on technical and moral grounds, and Teller later publicly called (1954) for his colleague's removal from positions involving national security, an act that alienated many within the scientific community. Teller received the 1962 Enrico Fermi Award For his contributions to the development, use, and control of nuclear energy; in 2003 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Teller, who distrusted arms control, was a supporter of a nuclear-powered X-ray laser missile defense system and a major proponent of President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. His writings include The Legacy of Hiroshima (with Allen Brown, 1962), The Constructive Uses of Nuclear Explosives (with others, 1968), and Memoirs: A Twentieth-Century Journey in Science and Politics (2001).

Bibliography

See biography by P. Goodchild (2005); G. Herken, Brotherhood of the Bomb (2002).

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Teller, Edward

 orig. Ede Teller

Edward Teller.

(credit: Courtesy of the University of California Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley, Calif.)

(born Jan. 15, 1908, Budapest, Hung., Austria-Hungary—died Sept. 9, 2003, Stanford, Calif.) Hungarian-born U.S. nuclear physicist. Born to a prosperous Jewish family, he earned a Ph.D. at the University of Leipzig (1930) before leaving Nazi Germany (1933) and settled in the U.S. in 1935. In 1941 he joined Enrico Fermi's team in the effort to produce the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction, and in 1943 J. Robert Oppenheimer recruited him for the Manhattan Project. At the war's end, Teller advocated development of a fusion bomb, and he won permission after initial government resistance. With Stanislaw Ulam he developed a workable hydrogen bomb in 1952. That same year he helped establish the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory (Livermore, Calif.), which became the chief U.S. factory for nuclear weapons. In 1954 he joined the opposition to Oppenheimer's continued security clearance. A staunch anticommunist, he devoted much energy to his crusade to keep the U.S. ahead of the Soviet Union in nuclear arms; he opposed nuclear weapons treaties, and he was principally responsible for convincing Pres. Ronald Reagan of the need for the Strategic Defense Initiative. In 2003 Teller was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

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Teller, Edward (1908–  ) physicist; born in Budapest, Hungary. He studied theoretical physics in Europe before emigrating to the U.S.A. (1935). At George Washington University, he collaborated with George Gamow in classifications of rules for beta decay, and applications of astrophysics to controlled thermonuclear reactions. Teller worked on the atomic bomb (1941–46), then became a physicist at the University of Chicago (1946–52). After joining the University of California: Berkeley (1953–75), he repudiated Oppenheimer's moral qualms and took the lead in developing the hydrogen bomb (1954). Throughout his career as a physicist and as a government adviser, Teller was an advocate of defensive atomic weaponry and often found himself engaged in controversies.