Edward Teller
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Edward Teller (
Hungarian:
Teller Ede; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a
Hungarian-born American theoretical physicist[1][2][3] who, although he claimed he did not care for the title,
[4] is known colloquially as "the father of the
hydrogen bomb". He made numerous contributions to
nuclear and
molecular physics,
spectroscopy (in particular, the
Jahn–Teller and
Renner–Teller effects) and
surface physics. His extension of
Enrico Fermi's theory of
beta decay, in the form of the so-called
Gamow–Teller transitions, provided an important stepping stone in its application, while the Jahn–Teller effect and the
Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) theory have retained their original formulation and are still mainstays in physics and chemistry.
[5] 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
[6] which is a standard starting point for the applications of the
Monte Carlo method to
statistical mechanics.
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
J. Robert Oppenheimer,
Teller was ostracized by much of the scientific community. He continued
to find support from the U.S. government and military research
establishment, particularly for his advocacy for
nuclear energy development, a strong nuclear arsenal, and a vigorous
nuclear testing program. He was a co-founder of
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), and was both its director and associate director for many years.
In his later years, Teller became especially known for his advocacy
of controversial technological solutions to both military and civilian
problems, including a plan to excavate an artificial harbor in
Alaska using
thermonuclear explosive in what was called
Project Chariot. He was a vigorous advocate of
Reagan's
Strategic Defense Initiative.
Throughout his life, Teller was known both for his scientific ability
and his difficult interpersonal relations and volatile personality, and
is considered one of the inspirations for the character
Dr. Strangelove in the
1964 movie of the same name.
Early life and education
Teller was born in
Budapest, Hungary (then
Austria-Hungary), into a
Jewish family in 1908. His parents were Ilona (née Deutsch), a pianist, and Max Teller, an attorney.
[7]
When he was very young,Teller had no interest in speaking. Despite
being raised in a Jewish family, he later on became an agnostic.
[8] He became very interested in numbers, and would calculate in his head large numbers, such as the number of seconds in a year.
[9]
He left Hungary in 1926 (partly due to the
numerus clausus rule under
Horthy's regime). The
political climate and revolutions in Hungary during his youth instilled a lingering animosity for both Communism and Fascism in Teller.
[10] When he was a young student, his right foot was severed in a streetcar accident in
Munich, requiring him to wear a
prosthetic foot and leaving him with a lifelong limp. Teller graduated in
chemical engineering at the
University of Karlsruhe and received his Ph.D. in
physics under
Werner Heisenberg 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 Russian physicists
George Gamow and
Lev Landau. Teller's lifelong friendship with a
Czech physicist,
George Placzek, was very important for Teller's scientific and philosophical development. It was Placzek who arranged a summer stay in
Rome with
Enrico Fermi for young Teller, thus orienting his scientific career in nuclear physics.
[11]
Teller spent two years at the
University of Göttingen, and left in 1933 through the aid of the
International 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 Augusta Maria "Mici" (pronounced "Mitzi") Harkanyi, the sister of a longtime friend.
[citation needed]
In 1935, thanks to George Gamow's incentive, Teller was invited to the United States to become a Professor of Physics at
George Washington University (GWU), 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.
[citation needed]
Teller in his youth
At GWU, Teller predicted the
Jahn–Teller effect (1937), which distorts molecules in certain situations; this affects the
chemical reactions of metals, and in particular the coloration of certain metallic dyes. Teller and
Hermann Arthur Jahn
analyzed it as a piece of purely mathematical physics. 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.
[12]
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 behavior of the gas behind such a wave proved
valuable to scientists who were studying
missile re-entry.
[13]
Manhattan Project
In 1942, Teller was invited to be part of
Robert Oppenheimer's summer planning seminar at the
University of California, 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 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 discussion from the fission weapon to the possibility of
a fusion weapon—what he called the "Super" (an early version of what
was later to be known as a hydrogen bomb).
[14]
On December 6, 1941, the United States had begun development of the atomic bomb, under the supervision of
Arthur Compton, chairman of the
University of Chicago physics department, who coordinated
uranium research with
Columbia University,
Princeton University, University of Chicago, and
University of California, Berkeley. Eventually Compton transferred the Columbia and Princeton scientists to the
Metallurgical Laboratory at Chicago, and Enrico Fermi moved in at the end of April 1942 and the construction of
Chicago Pile 1 began. Teller was left behind at first, but then called to Chicago two months later. In early 1943, the
Los Alamos laboratory was built to design an
atomic bomb under the supervision of Oppenheimer in
Los Alamos, New Mexico. Teller moved there in April 1943.
[15]
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 mechanism
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 was later revealed to be a
Soviet spy.
[16] Apparently, Teller managed to also irk his neighbors by playing the piano late in the night.
[17]
However, Teller made valuable contributions to bomb research,
especially in the elucidation of the implosion mechanism. He also was
one of the few scientists to actually watch (with eye protection) the
first test detonation 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."
[18]
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 were 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 unduly optimistic report in which he said that a
hydrogen bomb was feasible, and that further work should be encouraged
on its development. 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.
[19]
In 1946, Teller left Los Alamos to return to the University of Chicago as a professor and close associate of Enrico Fermi and
Maria Mayer.
[20] He was now known as the father of the hydrogen bomb.
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.
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. He insisted on involving more theorists, such as
Klaus Fuchs; it was Fuchs who together with
John von Neumann later claimed to invent compression by means of radiation implosion back in 1946.
[21]
However many of Teller's prominent colleagues, like Bethe and
Oppenheimer, were sure that the project of the H-bomb was technically
infeasible and politically undesirable. None of the available designs
were yet workable. However Soviet scientists who had worked on their own
hydrogen bomb have claimed that they developed it independently.
[22][23]
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 higher amounts of
tritium, the energy loss in the fusion process would be too great to
enable the fusion reaction to propagate. However, in 1951, in the joint
report by Ulam and Teller of March 1951, "Hydrodynamic Lenses and
Radiation Mirrors", an innovative idea emerged, and it was developed
into the first workable design for a megaton-range H-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, and the exact
contributions of each and how the final idea was arrived upon has been a
point of dispute in both public and classified discussions since the
early 1950s.
[24][25]
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 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,
[26] and referred to his work as a "stroke of genius" in 1954.
[27]
In both cases, however, 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
as
J. Carson Mark) have claimed that Teller would have never gotten any closer without the assistance of Ulam and others.
[28]
Ulam himself claimed that Teller only produced a "more generalized" version of Ulam's original design.
[29]
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
X-rays
produced by the fission bomb to first compress the fusion fuel (by
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.
[30]
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."
[31]
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.
[30]
There was an opinion that by analyzing the fallout from this test, the Soviets (led in their H-bomb work by
Andrei Sakharov) could have deciphered the new American design. However, this was later denied by the Soviet bomb researchers.
[32]
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).
[22]
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",
and claimed full credit for the invention.
[33][34]
Teller was known for getting engrossed in projects which were
theoretically interesting but practically unfeasible (the classic
"Super" was one such project.)
[17] About his work on the hydrogen bomb, Bethe said:
- "Nobody will blame 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."[35]
During the Manhattan Project, Teller also advocated 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.
[36]
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 propose
fusion boosting in 1945, which is essential for miniaturization and reliability and is used in all of today's nuclear weapons.
[37]
Oppenheimer controversy
Teller became controversial in 1954 when he testified against
J. Robert Oppenheimer, a former head of Los Alamos and an advisor to 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.
[38]
Asked at the hearing by AEC attorney 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.[39]
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.[27]
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, 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.[27]
Oppenheimer's security clearance was revoked after the hearings. Most
of Teller's former colleagues disapproved of his testimony and he
became ostracized by much of the scientific community.
[38]
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.
[40]
It has been suggested that Teller's testimony against Oppenheimer was
an attempt to remove Oppenheimer from power so that Teller could become
the leader of the American nuclear scientist community.
[41]
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 by
Haakon Chevalier, who had approached Oppenheimer to help the Russians. Teller said that, in hindsight, he would have responded differently.
[38]
Prior to the Oppenheimer controversy, Teller maintained a friendly
relationship with Oppenheimer. When Leó Szilárd asked Teller to help
circulate a petition that discourages The United States from using an
atomic bomb on Japan unless Japan is made fully aware of the possibility
of such an attack, he consulted Oppenheimer’s wisdom. Teller believed
that Oppenheimer was a natural leader and could help him with such a
formidable political problem.
[42]
Oppenheimer reassured Teller that the nation’s fate should be left to
the sensible politicians in Washington. Bolstered by Oppenheimer’s
influence, he decided to not sign the petition. However, Teller learned
soon after his meeting that Oppenheimer conversely endorsed a political
use of the super bomb. Following Teller’s discovery, his relationship
with his advisor began to deteriorate.
[42]
US Government work and political advocacy
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 develop
nuclear reactor safety standards as the chair of the
Reactor Safeguard Committee of the AEC in the late 1940s,
[43] and later headed an effort at
General Atomics which designed research reactors in which a
nuclear meltdown would be impossible (the
TRIGA).
[44]
Teller on television (1960)
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 the Rockefeller Brothers funded
Special Studies Project, which called for a $3 billion annual increase in America's military budget.
[45]
He 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 chaired the committee that founded the
Space Sciences Laboratory at Berkeley. 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.
[46] He testified against the test ban both before Congress as well as on television.
Teller established the
Department of Applied Science at the
University of California, Davis and
LLNL in 1963, which holds the Edward Teller endowed professorship in his honor.
[47]
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.
[17] In 1983, he spoke at
The Thomas Jefferson School, a conference of intellectuals discussing
Objectivism organized by economist Professor
George Reisman, where he received a standing ovation.
[48]
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.
Operation Plowshare and Project Chariot
One of the Chariot schemes involved chaining five thermonuclear devices to create the artificial harbor.
Teller was one of the strongest and best-known advocates for investigating
non-military uses of nuclear explosives, which the United States explored under
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 harbor more than a mile
long and half a mile wide to use for shipment of resources from coal and
oil fields through
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.
[49]
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 March 1960.
[50]
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 cancelled in 1962.
A related experiment which also had Teller's endorsement was a plan to extract oil from the
tar 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, who was opposed to having any nuclear weapons in Canada, although Canada had nuclear weapons from 1963 to 1984.
[51][52]
Nuclear technology and Israel
For some twenty years, Teller advised Israel on nuclear matters in
general, and on the building of a hydrogen bomb in particular.
[53] In 1952, Teller and Oppenheimer had a long meeting with
David 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 physicist
Yuval Neeman, who had similar political views. Between 1964 and 1967, Teller visited Israel six times, lecturing at
Tel Aviv University, and advising the chiefs of Israel's scientific-security circle as well as prime ministers and cabinet members.
[54]
At each of his talks with members of the Israeli security
establishment's highest levels, he would make them swear that they would
never be tempted into signing the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
[55] In 1967 when the Israeli nuclear program was nearing completion, Teller informed Neeman that he was going to tell the
CIA that Israel had built nuclear weapons and explain that it was justified by the background of the
Six-Day War.
[56] After Neeman cleared it with Prime Minister
Levi Eshkol, Teller briefed the head of the CIA's Office of Science and Technology, Carl Duckett.
[56] It took a year for Teller to convince the CIA that Israel had obtained
nuclear capability; the information then went through CIA Director
Richard Helms and then to the US president at that time,
Lyndon B. Johnson.
[56] Teller also persuaded them to end the American attempts to inspect the
Negev Nuclear Research Center in Dimona.
[56] Teller's personal opinion became factual assertion, when in 1976 Carl Duckett testified in
Congress before the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, that after receiving information from "American scientist", he drafted a
National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Israel's nuclear capability.
[56]
In the 1980s, Teller again visited Israel to advise the
Israeli government on building a nuclear reactor.
[57]
Three decades later, Teller confirmed that it was during his visits
that he concluded that Israel was in possession of nuclear weapons.
[56] After conveying the matter to the U.S. government, Teller reportedly said: "They [Israeli]
have it, and they were clever enough to trust their research and not to
test, they know that to test would get them into trouble."
[56]
Three Mile Island
Teller suffered a heart attack in 1979, and many observers
[58] described him as blaming it on
Jane Fonda: She had starred in
The China Syndrome, which depicted a fictional reactor accident and was released less than two weeks before the
Three Mile Island accident. She spoke out against
nuclear power
while promoting the film. Teller acted quickly to lobby in favor of
nuclear energy, testifying to its safety and reliability, and soon after
one flurry of activity suffered the attack. He signed a two-page-spread
ad in the July 31, 1979,
Wall Street Journal[nb 1] with the headline "I was the only victim of Three-Mile Island".
[59] [60] 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 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 that had manufactured one of the defective valves that contributed to the Three Mile Island accident.
[61]
Strategic Defense Initiative
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 ground
and satellite-based lasers, particle beams and missiles to destroy
incoming Soviet
ICBMs. Teller lobbied with government agencies—and got the approval of President
Ronald Reagan—for a 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. 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.
[61]
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.
[citation needed]
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.
[61]
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 inflict 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).
[citation needed]
There is contrary evidence. In the 1970s, a letter of Teller to
Leó Szilárd emerged, dated July 2, 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."[62]
The historian
Barton Bernstein argued that it is an "unconvincing claim" by Teller that he was a "covert dissenter" to the use of the weapon.
[63] In his 2001
Memoirs,
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.
[64]
Teller's own comments on the role of lasers in SDI, as disclosed in
live panel discussions, were published, and are available, in two laser
conference proceedings.
[65][66]
Asteroid Impact Avoidance
At a 1995 meeting at
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
(LLNL) in Calif., Edward Teller proposed to a collective of U.S. and
Russian ex-Cold War weapons designers and space engineers the use of
nuclear fusion warheads in diverting the paths of extinction event class
asteroids. Edward Teller suggested the creation of an orbital platform
for faster missile delivery. He further suggested the need for nuclear
weapons more powerful than the
Tsar Bomba for this purpose.
[67]
Death and legacy
Edward Teller in his later years
Appearing on television discussion
After Dark in 1987
Teller died in
Stanford, California on September 9, 2003, at the age of 95.
[17][68]
In his early career, Teller made 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.
[5] 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
[6] 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. 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
[17] (others 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."
[10] Nobel Prize winning physicist
Isidor I. Rabi once suggested that "It would have been a better world without Teller."
[69]
In addition, Teller's false claims that Stanislaw Ulam made no
significant contribution to the development of the hydrogen bomb
(despite Ulam's key insights of using compression and staging elements
to generate the thermonuclear reaction) and his personal attacks on
Oppenheimer caused even greater animosity within the general physics
community towards Teller.
[41]
In 1986, he was awarded the
United States Military Academy's Sylvanus Thayer Award.
[70] 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.
[20] Among the honors he received were the
Albert Einstein Award, the
Enrico Fermi Award, the
Corvin Chain and the
National Medal of Science.
[70] He was also named as part of the group of "U.S. Scientists" who were
Time magazine's
People of the Year in 1960,
[71] and an asteroid,
5006 Teller, is named after him.
[72] He was awarded with the
Presidential Medal of Freedom by President
George W. Bush less than two months before his death.
[17] His final paper, published posthumously, advocated the construction of a prototype
liquid fluoride thorium reactor.
[73][74]
