Histopathology: microscopic appearance of invasive ductal carcinoma of the breast. The slide is stained with Haematoxylin & Eosin.
Histopathology: microscopic appearance of invasive ductal carcinoma of the breast. The slide is stained with an antibody against the ongene Her2neu. The dark-brown reaction indicates that this tumor over-expresses this gene.
Cytopathology: microscopic appearance of a Pap test. The pink cell at the center with a large nucleus is abnormal, compatible with low-grade dysplasia.
Autopsy: a brain surrounded by pus (the yellow-greyish coat around the brain, under the dura lifted by the forceps), the result of bacterial meningitis.
Anatomical pathology (Commonwealth) or Anatomic pathology (U.S.) is a medical specialty that is concerned with the diagnosis of disease based on the macroscopic, microscopic, biochemical, immunologic and molecular examination of organs and tissues. Over the last century, surgical pathology has evolved tremendously: from historical examination of whole bodies (autopsy)
to a more modernized practice, centered on the diagnosis and prognosis
of cancer to guide treatment decision-making in oncology. Its modern
founder was the Italian scientist Giovan Battista Morgagni from Forlì.
Anatomic
pathology relates to the processing, examination, and diagnosis of
surgical specimens by a physician trained in pathological diagnosis.
Clinical pathology is the division that processes the test requests more
familiar to the general public; such as blood cell counts, coagulation
studies, urinalysis, blood glucose level determinations and throat
cultures. Its subsections include chemistry, hematology, microbiology,
immunology, urinalysis and blood bank.
Anatomical pathology is itself divided in subspecialties, the main ones being surgical pathology
(breast, gynecological, endocrine, gastrointestinal, genitourinary,
soft tissue, head and neck, dermatopathology), neuropathology,
hematopathology cytopathology, and forensic pathology. To be licensed to practice pathology, one has to complete medical school and secure a license to practice medicine. An approved residency program and certification (in the U.S., the American Board of Pathology or the American Osteopathic Board of Pathology) is usually required to obtain employment or hospital privileges.
Skills and procedures
The procedures used in anatomic pathology include:
Gross examination
– the examination of diseased tissues with the naked eye. This is
important especially for large tissue fragments, because the disease can
often be visually identified. It is also at this step that the
pathologist selects areas that will be processed for histopathology. The
eye can sometimes be aided with a magnifying glass or a stereo microscope, especially when examining parasitic organisms.
Histopathology – the microscopic examination of stained tissue sections using histological techniques. The standard stains are haematoxylin and eosin,
but many others exist. The use of haematoxylin and eosin-stained slides
to provide specific diagnoses based on morphology is considered to be
the core skill of anatomic pathology. The science of staining tissues
sections is called histochemistry.
Immunohistochemistry
– the use of antibodies to detect the presence, abundance, and
localization of specific proteins. This technique is critical to
distinguishing between disorders with similar morphology, as well as
characterizing the molecular properties of certain cancers.
In situ hybridization – Specific DNA and RNA molecules can be identified on sections using this technique. When the probe is labeled with fluorescent dye, the technique is called FISH.
Cytopathology – the examination of loose cells spread and stained on glass slides using cytology techniques
Electron microscopy
– the examination of tissue with an electron microscope, which allows
much greater magnification, enabling the visualization of organelles within the cells. Its use has been largely supplanted by immunohistochemistry, but it is still in common use for certain tasks, including the diagnosis of kidney disease and the identification of immotile cilia syndrome.
Surgical pathology
is the most significant and time-consuming area of practice for most
anatomical pathologists. Surgical pathology involves the gross and
microscopic examination of surgical specimens, as well as biopsies submitted by non-surgeons such as general internists, medical subspecialists, dermatologists, and interventional radiologists.
Surgical pathology increasingly requires technologies and skills
traditionally associated with clinical pathology such as molecular
diagnostics.
Oral and maxillofacial pathology
In the United States, subspecialty-trained doctors of dentistry, rather than medical doctors, can be certified by a professional board to practice Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology.
Cytopathology
Cytopathology
is a sub-discipline of anatomical pathology concerned with the
microscopic examination of whole, individual cells obtained from
exfoliation or fine-needle aspirates.
Cytopathologists are trained to perform fine-needle aspirates of
superficially located organs, masses, or cysts and are often able to
render an immediate diagnosis in the presence of the patient and
consulting physician. In the case of screening tests such as the Papanicolaou smear,
non-physician cytotechnologists are often employed to perform initial
reviews, with only positive or uncertain cases examined by the
pathologist. Cytopathology is a board-certifiable subspecialty in the
U.S.
Molecular pathology
Molecular pathology
is an emerging discipline within anatomical and clinical pathology that
is focused on the use of nucleic acid-based techniques such as in-situ
hybridization, reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction, and
nucleic acid microarrays for specialized studies of disease in tissues
and cells. Molecular pathology shares some aspects of practice with both
anatomic and clinical pathology, and is sometimes considered a
"crossover" discipline.
Forensic pathology
Forensic pathologists
receive specialized training in determining the cause of death and
other legally relevant information from the bodies of persons who died
suddenly with no known medical condition, those who die from non-natural
causes, as well as those dying as a result of homicide, or other
criminally suspicious deaths. A majority of the forensic pathologists
cases are due to natural causes. Often, additional tests such as
toxicology, histology, and genetic testing will be used to help the
pathologist determine the cause of death. Forensic pathologists will
often testify in courts regarding their findings in cases of homicide
and suspicious death. They also play a large role in public health, such
as investigating deaths in the workplace, deaths in custody, as well as
sudden and unexpected deaths in children.
Forensic pathologists often have special areas of interest within their
practice, such as sudden death due to cardiac pathology, deaths due to
drugs, or Sudden Infant Death (SIDS), and various others.
Training and certification
Australia
(Also New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and Saudi Arabia)
Anatomical Pathology is one of the specialty training programs offered by the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia (RCPA). The RCPA.
To qualify as a Fellow of the RCPA in Anatomical Pathology, the
candidate must complete a recognised undergraduate or postgraduate
medical qualification and then complete a minimum of 2 years of clinical
medical experience as a prerequisite to selection as a training
registrar. The training program is a minimum of 5 years, served in at
least two laboratories, and candidates must pass a Basic Pathological
Sciences examination (usually in first year), the Part 1 examinations
(not before 3rd year) and the Part 2 examinations (not before 5th year).
Fellows may then continue into subspecialty training.
Canada
Anatomical Pathology (AP) is one of the specialist certificates granted by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.
Other certificates related to pathology include general pathology (GP),
hematopathology, and neuropathology. Candidates for any of these must
have completed four years of medical school and five years of residency
training.
US
Anatomic Pathology (AP) is one of the two primary certifications offered by the American Board of Pathology (the other is Clinical Pathology (CP)) and one of three primary certifications offered by the American Osteopathic Board of Pathology.
To be certified in anatomic pathology, the trainee must complete four
years of medical school followed by three years of residency training.
Many U.S. pathologists are certified in both AP and CP, which requires a
total of four years of residency. After completing residency, many
pathologists enroll in further years of fellowship training to gain
expertise in a subspecialty of AP or CP. Pathologists' Assistants are
highly trained medical professionals with specialized training in
Anatomic and Forensic pathology. To become a Pathologists' Assistant one
must enter and successfully complete a NAACLS accredited program and
pass the ASCP Board of Certification Exam.
Practice settings
Academic anatomical pathology
is practiced at university medical centers by pathologists who are also
university faculty. As such, they often have diverse responsibilities
that may include training pathology residents, teaching medical students, conducting basic, clinical, or translational research,
or performing administrative duties, all in addition to the practice of
diagnostic anatomical pathology. Pathologists in academic settings
often sub-specialize in a particular area of anatomic pathology and may
serve as consultants to other pathologists regarding cases in their
specific area of expertise.
Group practice is the most traditional private practice
model. In this arrangement, a group of senior pathologists will control a
partnership that employs junior pathologists and contracts
independently with hospitals to provide diagnostic services, as well as
attracting referral business from local clinicians who practice in the
outpatient setting. The group often owns a laboratory for histology
and ancillary testing of tissue, and may hold contracts to run
hospital-owned labs. Many pathologists who practice in this setting are
trained and certified in both anatomical pathology and clinical pathology, which allows them to supervise blood banks, clinical chemistry laboratories, and medical microbiology laboratories as well.
Large corporate providers of anatomical pathology services, such asAmeriPath
in the United States. In this model, pathologists are employees, rather
than independent partners. This model has been criticized for reducing
physician independence, but defenders claim that the larger size of
these practices allows for economies of scale and greater specialization, as well a sufficient volume to support more specialized testing methods.
Multispecialty groups, composed of physicians from clinical specialties as well as radiology and pathology, are another practice model. In some case, these may be large groups controlled by an HMO
or other large health care organization. In others, they are in essence
clinician group practices that employ pathologists to provide
diagnostic services for the group. These groups may own their own
laboratories, or, in some cases may make controversial arrangements with
"pod labs" that allow clinician groups to lease space, with the
clinician groups receiving direct insurance payments for pathology
services. Proposed changes to Medicare regulations may essentially eliminate these arrangements in the United States.
A pair of micrographs of a cytopathology specimen showing a 3-dimensional cluster of cancerous cells (serous carcinoma)
Cytopathology (from Greekκύτος, kytos, "a hollow"; πάθος, pathos, "fate, harm"; and -λογία, -logia) is a branch of pathology that studies and diagnoses diseases on the cellular level. The discipline was founded by George Nicolas Papanicolaou in 1928. Cytopathology is generally used on samples of free cells or tissue fragments, in contrast to histopathology, which studies whole tissues. Cytopathology is frequently, less precisely, called "cytology", which means "the study of cells".
Cytopathology is commonly used to investigate diseases involving a
wide range of body sites, often to aid in the diagnosis of cancer but
also in the diagnosis of some infectious diseases and other inflammatory
conditions. For example, a common application of cytopathology is the Pap smear, a screening tool used to detect precancerous cervical lesions that may lead to cervical cancer.
Cytopathologic tests are sometimes called smear tests because the samples may be smeared across a glass microscope slide for subsequent staining and microscopic examination. However, cytology samples may be prepared in other ways, including cytocentrifugation. Different types of smear tests may also be used for cancer diagnosis. In this sense, it is termed a cytologic smear.
Micrograph of a pilocytic astrocytoma, showing characteristic bipolar cells with long pilocytic (hair-like) processes. Smear preparation. H&E stain
Cell collection
There are two methods of collecting cells for cytopathologic analysis: exfoliative cytology, and intervention cytology.
In this method, cells are collected after they have been either
spontaneously shed by the body ("spontaneous exfoliation"), or manually
scraped/brushed off of a surface in the body ("mechanical exfoliation").
An example of spontaneous exfoliation is when cells of the pleural cavity or peritoneal cavity
are shed into the pleural or peritoneal fluid. This fluid can be
collected via various methods for examination. Examples of mechanical
exfoliation include Pap smears, where cells are scraped from the cervix with a cervical spatula, or bronchial brushings, where a bronchoscope is inserted into the trachea
and used to evaluate a visible lesion by brushing cells from its
surface and subjecting them to cytopathologic analysis. After sampling,
two main techniques can be used: conventional cytology and liquid-based cytology. With the latter, the sample is placed in a liquid that is then processed for further investigation.
Intervention cytology
Brushes used to collect samples for cytology.
In intervention cytology the pathologist intervenes into the body for sample collection.
Fine-needle aspiration
Fine-needle aspiration, or fine-needle aspiration cytology (FNAC), involves use of a needle attached to a syringe
to collect cells from lesions or masses in various body organs by
microcoring, often with the application of negative pressure (suction)
to increase yield. FNAC can be performed under palpation guidance (i.e.,
the clinician can feel the lesion) on a mass in superficial regions
like the neck, thyroid or breast; FNAC may be assisted by ultrasound or CAT scan
for sampling of deep-seated lesions within the body that cannot be
localized via palpation. FNAC is widely used in many countries, but
success rate is dependent on the skill of the practitioner. If performed
by a pathologist alone, or as team with pathologist-cytotechnologist,
the success rate of proper diagnosis is higher than when performed by a
non-pathologist.
This may be due to the pathologist's ability to immediately evaluate
specimens under a microscope and immediately repeat the procedure if
sampling was inadequate.
Fine needles are 23 to 27 gauge.
Because needles as small as 27 gauge can almost always yield diagnostic
material, FNAC is often the least injurious way to obtain diagnostic
tissue from a lesion. Sometimes a syringe holder may be used to
facilitate using one hand to perform the biopsy while the other hand is
immobilizing the mass. Imaging equipment such as a CT scanner or
ultrasound may be used to assist in locating the region to be biopsied.
FNAC has become synonymous to interventional cytology.
Sediment cytology
For
cytology of sediment, the sample is collected from the fixative that
was used for processing the biopsy or autopsy specimen. The fixative is
mixed properly and taken into a centrifuge tube and is centrifuged. The
sediment is used for smearing. These sediments are the cells that are
shed by the autopsy and biopsy specimen during processing.
Imprint cytology
Imprint
cytology is a preparation wherein the tissue of interest touches a
glass slide, leaving behind its imprint in the form of cells on the
slide. The imprint can subsequently be stained and studied.
Parameters
The nucleus
of the cell is very important in evaluating the cellular sample. In
cancerous cells, altered DNA activity can be seen as a physical change
in the nuclear qualities. Since more DNA is unfolded and being
expressed, the nucleus will be darker and less uniform, larger than in
normal cells, and often show a bright-red nucleolus.
While the cytologist's primary responsibility is to discern
whether cancerous or precancerous pathology is present in the cellular
sample analysed, other pathologies may be seen such as:
Various normal functions of cell growth, metabolism, and division can fail or work in abnormal ways and lead to diseases.
Cytopathology is best used as one of three tools, the second and third being the physical examination and medical imaging.
Cytology can be used to diagnose a condition and spare a patient from
surgery to obtain a larger specimen. An example is thyroid FNAC; many
benign conditions can be diagnosed with a superficial biopsy and the
patient can go back to normal activities right away. If a malignant
condition is diagnosed, the patient may be able to start
radiation/chemotherapy, or may need to have surgery to remove and/or
stage the cancer.
Some tumors may be difficult to biopsy, such as sarcomas. Other rare tumors may be dangerous to biopsy, such as pheochromocytoma.
In general, a fine-needle aspiration can be done anywhere it is safe to
put a needle, including liver, lung, kidney, and superficial masses.
Proper cytopathology technique takes time to master.
Cytotechnologists and cytopathologists can assist clinicians by
assisting with sample collection. A "quick read" is a peek under the
microscope and can tell the clinician whether enough diagnostic material
was obtained. Cytological specimens must be properly prepared so that
the cells are not damaged.
Further information about the specimen may be gained by
immunohistochemical stains and molecular testing, particularly if the
sample is prepared using liquid based cytology. Often "reflex" testing
is performed, such as HPV testing on an abnormal pap test or flow cytometry on a lymphoma specimen.
Body regions
Cytopathologic techniques are used in the examination of virtually all body organs and tissues:
Edward Teller (Hungarian: Teller Ede; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian-Americantheoretical physicist who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb", although he did not care for the title, and was only part of a team who developed the technology.
Throughout his life, Teller was known both for his scientific ability
and for his difficult interpersonal relations and volatile personality.
Teller was an early member of the Manhattan Project, charged with developing the first atomic bomb, and proposed the solid pit implosion design which was successful. He made a serious push to develop the first fusion-based weapons as well, but these were deferred until after World War II. He did not sign the Szilard petition, which sought to have the bombs detonated as a demonstration, but not on a city, but later agreed that Szilard was right, and the bombs should not have been dropped on a defenceless civilian population. He was a co-founder of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and was both its director and associate director for many years.
He continued, however, 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. 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, and Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative.
Ede Teller was born on January 15, 1908, in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, into a Jewish family. His parents were Ilona, a pianist, and Max Teller, an attorney. He was educated at the Fasori Lutheran Gymnasium,
then in the Minta (Model) Gymnasium in Budapest. Jewish of origin,
later in life Teller became an agnostic Jew. "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, the Day 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." Like Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman, Teller was a late talker.
He developed the ability to speak later than most children, but became
very interested in numbers, and would calculate large numbers in his
head for fun.
From 1926 to 1928, Teller studied mathematics and chemistry at the University of Karlsruhe, where he graduated with a degree in chemical engineering. He has stated that the person who was responsible for him becoming a physicist is Herman Mark, who was a visiting professor,
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. Mark was an expert in polymer chemistry, a field which is essential to understanding biochemistry, and Mark taught him about the leading breakthroughs in quantum physics made by Louis de Broglie,
among others. It was this exposure which he had gotten from Mark's
lectures which is what motivated Teller to switch to physics.
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 not such a clear-cut
route for a career with a degree in physics. He was not privvy to the
discussions his father had with his professors, but the result was that
he got his father's permission to become a physicist.
Teller then attended the University of Munich where he studied physics under Arnold Sommerfeld. On July 14, 1928, while still a young student in Munich, he was taking a streetcar to catch a train for a hike in the nearby Alps
and decided to jump off while it was still moving. He fell, and the
wheel severed most of his right foot. For the rest of his life, he
walked with a permanent limp, and on occasion he wore a prosthetic foot. The painkillers
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 the placebo effect where he would convince himself that he had taken painkillers while drinking only water. Werner Heisenberg said that it was the hardiness of Teller's spirit, rather than stoicism, that allowed him to cope so well with the accident.
In 1929, Teller switched to the University of Leipzig where in 1930, he received his Ph.D. in physics under Heisenberg. Teller's dissertation dealt with one of the first accurate quantum mechanical treatments of the hydrogen molecular ion. That year, he befriended Russian physicists George Gamow and Lev Landau. Teller's lifelong friendship with a Czech physicist, George Placzek, was also very important for his scientific and philosophical development. It was Placzek who arranged a summer stay in Rome with Enrico Fermi in 1932, thus orienting Teller's scientific career in nuclear physics. Also in 1930, Teller moved to the University of Göttingen, then one of the world's great centers of physics due to the presence of Max Born and James Franck, but after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, Germany became unsafe for Jewish people, and he left 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 his long-time girlfriend Augusta Maria
"Mici" (pronounced "Mitzi") Harkanyi, the sister of a friend. He returned to England in September 1934.
Mici had been a student in Pittsburgh,
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 at George Washington University, where he worked with Gamow until 1941. At George Washington University in 1937, Teller predicted the Jahn–Teller effect, 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 Stephen Brunauer and Paul Hugh Emmett, Teller also made an important contribution to surface physics and chemistry: the so-called Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) isotherm. Teller and Mici became naturalized citizens of the United States on March 6, 1941.
When World War II began, Teller wanted to contribute to the war effort. On the advice of the well-known Caltechaerodynamicist and fellow Hungarian émigréTheodore 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.
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 concept of what
was later to be known as a hydrogen bomb.
Teller became part of the Theoretical (T) Division. He was given a secret identity of Ed Tilden. He was irked at being passed over as its head; the job was instead given to Hans Bethe. Oppenheimer had him investigate unusual approaches to building fission weapons, such as autocatalysis, in which the efficiency of the bomb would increase as the nuclear chain reaction progressed, but proved to be impractical. He also investigated using uranium hydride instead of uranium metal, but its efficiency turned out to be "negligible or less".
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). On a visit to New York, he asked Maria Goeppert-Mayer to carry out calculations on the Super for him. She confirmed Teller's own results: the Super was not going to work.
A special group was established under Teller in March 1944 to investigate the mathematics of an implosion-type nuclear weapon.
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 in plutonium by Emilio 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 by Rudolf Peierls from the British Mission, who in turn brought in Klaus Fuchs, who was later revealed to be a Soviet spy. Teller's Super group became part of Fermi's F Division when he joined the Los Alamos Laboratory in September 1944. It included Stanislaw Ulam, Jane Roberg, Geoffrey Chew, Harold and Mary Argo, and Maria Goeppert-Mayer.
Teller made valuable contributions to bomb research, especially
in the elucidation of the implosion mechanism. He was the first to
propose the solid pit design that was eventually successful. This design became known as a "Christy pit", after the physicist Robert F. Christy who made the pit a reality. Teller was one of the few scientists to actually watch (with eye protection) the Trinity 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."
Decision to drop the bombs
In the days before and after the first demonstration of a nuclear weapon, the Trinity test in July 1945, his fellow Hungarian Leo Szilard circulated the Szilard petition, which argued that a demonstration to the Japanese of the new weapon should occur prior to actual use on Japan,
and with that hopefully the weapons would 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 to not sign the petition.
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.
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.
Unknown to Teller at the time, four of his colleagues were solicited by the then secret May to June 1945 Interim Committee. It is this organization which ultimately decided on how the new weapons should initially be used. The committee's four-member Scientific 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.
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.
In 1990, 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. 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.
Hydrogen bomb
Despite an offer from Norris 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 and Goeppert-Mayer. Mayer's work on the internal structure of the elements would earn her the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963.
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 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 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. With John von Neumann,
he contributed an 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, so that it would almost certainly
retard their progress on it.
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 were yet workable. However Soviet scientists who had worked on their own hydrogen bomb have claimed that they developed it independently.
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 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 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.
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."
The issue is controversial. Bethe considered Teller's contribution to
the invention of the H-bomb a true innovation as early as 1952, and referred to his work as a "stroke of genius" in 1954.
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. Ulam himself claimed that Teller only produced a "more generalized" version of Ulam's original design.
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.
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 US and the USSR had developed multi-megaton weapons. Even Oppenheimer, who was originally opposed to the project, called the idea "technically sweet."
The 10.4 Mt "Ivy Mike" shot of 1952 appeared to vindicate Teller's long-time advocacy for the hydrogen 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 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.
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.
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).
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.
Teller was known for getting engrossed in projects which were
theoretically interesting but practically unfeasible (the classic
"Super" was one such project.) 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.
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. 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.
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.
Teller became controversial in 1954 when he testified against Oppenheimer 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 state that Oppenheimer should not be granted security clearance.
Asked at the hearing by Atomic Energy Commission (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.
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.
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."
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 resulted in the destruction of Oppenheimer's
career.
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.
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.
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.
Historian Richard Rhodes
said that in his opinion it was already a foregone conclusion that
Oppenheimer would have his security clearance revoked by then AEC
chairman Lewis 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 as Robert Christy,
who refused to shake his hand in one infamous incident. This was
emblematic of his later treatment which resulted in his being forced
into the role of an outcast of the physics community, thus leaving him
little choice but to align himself with industrialists.
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, and in the late 1950s headed an effort at General Atomics which designed research reactors in which a nuclear meltdown would be impossible. The TRIGA (Training, Research, Isotopes, General Atomic) has been built and used in hundreds of hospitals and universities worldwide for medical isotope production and research.
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.
In 1956 he attended the Project Nobskaanti-submarine warfare conference, where discussion ranged from oceanography to nuclear weapons. In the course of discussing a small nuclear warhead for the Mark 45 torpedo, he started a discussion on the possibility of developing a physically small one-megaton nuclear warhead for the Polaris 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 the Hiroshima bomb, was enough for Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Arleigh Burke, who was present in person, and Navy strategic missile development shifted from Jupiter to Polaris by the end of the year.
He was Director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which he helped to found with Ernest O. Lawrence, from 1958 to 1960, 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. 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 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1963, which holds the Edward Teller endowed professorship in his honor.
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.
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.
Global climate change
Teller was one of the first prominent people to raise the danger of climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels. At an address to the membership of the American 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 of carbon 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."
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 a greenhouse 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.
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.
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.
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.
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, titled Project Oilsands. 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. After
Diefenbaker was out of office, Canada went on to have nuclear weapons,
from a US nuclear sharing agreement, from 1963 to 1984.
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. 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 Ne'eman, 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.
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. After Neeman cleared it with Prime Minister Levi 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 obtained nuclear capability; the information then went through CIA Director Richard Helms to the president at that time, Lyndon B. Johnson. Teller also persuaded them to end the American attempts to inspect the Negev Nuclear Research Center in Dimona. In 1976 Duckett testified in Congress before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, that after receiving information from "American scientist", he drafted a National Intelligence Estimate on Israel's nuclear capability.
In the 1980s, Teller again visited Israel to advise the Israeli government on building a nuclear reactor.
Three decades later, Teller confirmed that it was during his visits
that he concluded that Israel was in possession of nuclear weapons.
After conveying the matter to the U.S. government, Teller reportedly
said: "They [Israel] 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."
Three Mile Island
Teller suffered a heart attack in 1979, and blamed it on Jane Fonda, who 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. 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 suffered the attack.
He signed a two-page-spread ad in the July 31, 1979, Wall Street Journal with the headline "I was the only victim of Three-Mile Island". 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.
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
encouraging the dismissal of a laboratory director (Roy Woodruff) who
had attempted to correct the error.
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. Hans 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 that would cost a
very small fraction of the SDI program.
In 1987 Teller published a book supporting civil defense and active protection systems such as SDI which was titled Better a Shield than a Sword and his views on the role of lasers in SDI were published, and are available, in two 1986-7 laser conference proceedings.
Asteroid impact avoidance
Following the 1994 Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet impacts with Jupiter, Teller proposed to a collective of U.S. and Russian ex-Cold War weapons designers in a 1995 planetary defense workshop at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, that they collaborate to design a 1 gigaton nuclear explosive device, which would be equivalent to the kinetic energy of a 1 km diameter asteroid.
In order to safeguard the earth, the theoretical 1 Gt device would
weigh about 25–30 tons, hence light enough to be lifted on the Russian Energia rocket and it could be used to instantaneously vaporize a 1 km asteroid, divert the paths of extinction event class asteroids
(greater than 10 km in diameter) within a few months of short notice,
while with 1-year notice, at an interception location no closer than Jupiter, it would also be capable of dealing with the even rarer short period comets which can come out of the Kuiper 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.
Death and legacy
Edward Teller in his later years
Appearing on British television discussion After Dark in 1987
Teller died in Stanford, California on September 9, 2003, at the age of 95. He had suffered a stroke two days before and had long been suffering from a number of conditions related to his advanced age.
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".
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 (others speculated to be RAND theorist Herman Kahn,
mathematician John von Neumann, rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, and Secretary of DefenseRobert 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." In one episode of Mission Hill
(1999), a character appears to be inspired by Edward Teller. The
character is very old, has pictures of himself and other scientists in
his home office and is known as the father of the nuclear bomb.
Nobel Prize winning physicist Isidor I. Rabi once suggested that "It would have been a better world without Teller."
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 great animosity towards Teller within the general
physics community.
His final paper, published posthumously, advocated the construction of a prototype liquid fluoride thorium reactor. The genesis and impetus for this last paper, was recounted by the co-author Ralph Moir in 2007.
Bibliography
Our Nuclear Future; Facts, Dangers, and Opportunities (1958)
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