Edward Teller (Hungarian: Teller Ede; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist and chemical engineer. He is commonly known as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" and was one of the creators of the Teller–Ulam design, which was inspired by Stanisław Ulam.
Teller was born in Austria-Hungary in 1908. He moved to the United States in the 1930s as part of a group of Hungarian scientists who relocated to the U.S. He made many contributions to nuclear and molecular physics, spectroscopy, and surface physics. His work expanded Enrico Fermi’s theory of beta decay, which became known as Gamow–Teller transitions. The Jahn–Teller effect and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) theory remain important in physics and chemistry.
Teller contributed to Thomas–Fermi theory, which is a foundation for density functional theory, a tool used in quantum mechanics to study complex molecules. In 1953, Teller co-authored a paper with Nicholas Metropolis, Arianna Rosenbluth, Marshall Rosenbluth, and Augusta Teller. This paper helped start the use of the Monte Carlo method in statistical mechanics and Bayesian statistics.
Teller was an early member of the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb. He worked to create fusion-based weapons, but these were not completed until after World War II. To support the hydrogen bomb project, Teller helped with the George shot of the Operation Greenhouse nuclear tests, which produced the first successful thermonuclear reaction.
Teller co-founded the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and held leadership roles there. After giving testimony that led to the loss of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s security clearance, the scientific community avoided him.
Teller continued to work with the U.S. government and military, promoting nuclear power, a strong nuclear arsenal, and nuclear testing. In his later years, he supported controversial ideas, such as using a thermonuclear explosive to build an artificial harbor in Alaska (Project Chariot) and supporting Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. He received the Enrico Fermi Award and Albert Einstein Award. He died in 2003 at the age of 95.
Early life and work
Ede Teller was born on January 15, 1908, in Budapest, which was then part of Austria-Hungary. He was born into a Jewish family. His mother was Ilona (née Deutsch), a pianist, and his father was Miksa Teller, an attorney. He attended the Minta Gymnasium in Budapest. Teller did not believe in any religion. He later said, "Religion was not an issue in my family. It was never discussed. My only religious training came because the Minta required all students to 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." Teller was slow to speak as a child, but he became very interested in numbers. For fun, he calculated large numbers in his head.
Teller left Hungary for Germany in 1926, partly because of a rule called the numerus clausus, which limited Jewish students’ access to education under Miklós Horthy’s government. The political situation and events in Hungary during his youth made him dislike Communism and Fascism.
From 1926 to 1928, Teller studied mathematics and chemistry at the University of Karlsruhe, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering. He once said that Herman Mark, a visiting professor, influenced him to become a physicist. Mark taught about molecular spectroscopy and explained how new ideas in physics were changing chemistry. Mark was an expert in polymer chemistry, a field important to biochemistry, and he taught about breakthroughs in quantum physics made by scientists like Louis de Broglie. After hearing Mark’s lectures, Teller decided to switch to physics. When he told his father about his plan, his father was worried and visited him to talk to his professors. While a chemical engineering degree led to stable jobs, physics offered fewer clear paths. His father eventually agreed to let him pursue physics.
Teller then studied physics at the University of Munich under Arnold Sommerfeld. In 1928, while still a student, he was hit by a streetcar, and his right foot was nearly lost. He walked with a limp for the rest of his life and sometimes used a prosthetic foot. Painkillers he took interfered with his thinking, so he stopped taking them and used willpower to manage the pain. He convinced himself he had taken painkillers when he had actually drunk water. Werner Heisenberg said Teller’s strong spirit, not just his ability to endure pain, helped him cope with the accident.
In 1929, Teller moved to the University of Leipzig, where he earned his PhD in physics under Heisenberg in 1930. His dissertation studied one of the first accurate quantum mechanical models of the hydrogen molecular ion. That year, he became friends with Russian physicists George Gamow and Lev Landau. His lifelong friendship with Czech physicist George Placzek also helped shape his scientific and philosophical ideas. Placzek arranged for Teller to spend a summer in Rome with Enrico Fermi in 1932, which guided Teller’s career toward nuclear physics. In 1930, Teller moved to the University of Göttingen, a major center for physics because of scientists like Max Born and James Franck. However, after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, it became dangerous for Jewish people. With help from the International Rescue Committee, Teller left Germany. He briefly lived in England and spent a year in Copenhagen, working under Niels Bohr. In February 1934, he married Augusta Maria "Mici" Harkanyi, who was a Calvinist Christian. They were married in a Calvinist church. He returned to England in September 1934.
Mici had studied in Pittsburgh and wanted to return to the United States. In 1935, George Gamow invited Teller to the United States to teach physics at George Washington University, where he worked with Gamow until 1941. In 1937, Teller predicted the Jahn–Teller effect, which describes how certain molecules change shape under specific conditions. This effect influences chemical reactions and the color of some metallic dyes. Teller and Hermann Arthur Jahn studied it as a mathematical physics problem. Teller also worked with Stephen Brunauer and Paul Hugh Emmett to develop the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) isotherm, an important contribution to surface physics and chemistry. Teller and Mici became U.S. citizens on March 6, 1941.
At George Washington University, Teller organized annual meetings called the Washington Conferences on Theoretical Physics (1935–1947), which brought together top physicists.
When World War II began, Teller wanted to help with the war effort. With advice from Theodore von Kármán, a Caltech scientist and fellow Hungarian émigré, Teller worked with his friend Hans Bethe to develop a theory about shock waves. Later, their research helped scientists study the behavior of gas during missile re-entry.
Manhattan Project
In 1942, Teller was invited to join Robert Oppenheimer’s summer meeting at the University of California, Berkeley, about the origins of the Manhattan Project, the US effort to develop the first nuclear weapons. A few weeks earlier, Teller had been talking with his friend and colleague Enrico Fermi about the possibility of atomic warfare. Fermi casually suggested that a weapon based on nuclear fission might trigger a larger nuclear fusion reaction. Although Teller first explained to Fermi why he thought the idea would not work, he became interested in the possibility and quickly lost interest in making only an atomic bomb, even though this was not yet complete. At the Berkeley meeting, Teller shifted the discussion from fission weapons to fusion weapons, which he called the “Super,” an early idea for a hydrogen bomb.
Arthur Compton, the head of the University of Chicago physics department, managed uranium research at Columbia University, Princeton University, the University of Chicago, and the University of California, Berkeley. To avoid confusion and repeated work, Compton moved the scientists to the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago. Although Teller and Mici were now American citizens, they had relatives in enemy countries, so Teller did not go to Chicago at first. In early 1943, construction of the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico began. With Oppenheimer as its director, the laboratory’s goal was to design an atomic bomb. Teller moved there in March 1943. In Los Alamos, he annoyed his neighbors by playing the piano late at night.
Teller joined the Theoretical (T) Division. He was given a secret name, Ed Tilden. He was upset that he was not chosen to lead the division; the role went to Hans Bethe. Oppenheimer asked Teller to study unusual methods for building fission weapons, such as autocatalysis, where the bomb’s efficiency would increase as the nuclear chain reaction continued. This proved impractical. He also studied using uranium hydride instead of uranium metal, but its effectiveness was “negligible or less.” He continued to support his ideas for a fusion weapon, even though this work had low priority during the war (as creating a fission weapon was already difficult). During a visit to New York, he asked Maria Goeppert-Mayer to calculate details about the Super for him. She confirmed his results: the Super would not work.
A special group was formed under Teller in March 1944 to study the mathematics of an implosion-type nuclear weapon. This also faced challenges. Because of his interest in the Super, Teller did not focus as much on implosion calculations as Bethe wanted. These tasks were originally low priority, but the discovery of spontaneous fission in plutonium by Emilio Segrè’s group made the implosion bomb more important. 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. Teller was replaced by Rudolf Peierls from the British Mission, who brought in Klaus Fuchs, later revealed to be a Soviet spy. Teller’s Super group became part of Fermi’s F Division when Fermi joined the Los Alamos Laboratory in September 1944. The group included Stanislaw Ulam, Jane Roberg, Geoffrey Chew, Harold and Mary Argo, and Maria Goeppert-Mayer.
Teller made important contributions to bomb research, especially in understanding the implosion mechanism. He was the first to suggest the solid pit design that eventually worked. This design became known as a “Christy pit,” named after physicist Robert F. Christy, who made it a reality. Teller was one of the few scientists to 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 the atomic flash “was as if I had pulled open the curtain in a dark room and broad daylight streamed in.”
Before and after the first demonstration of a nuclear weapon (the Trinity test in July 1945), Hungarian Leo Szilard circulated the Szilard petition, which argued that a demonstration of the new weapon should be shown to Japan before using it on the country, and that the weapons should never be used on people. In response, Teller asked his friend Robert Oppenheimer for advice. Teller believed Oppenheimer was a natural leader and could help with such a political issue. Oppenheimer assured Teller that the nation’s future should be left to wise politicians in Washington. Encouraged by Oppenheimer’s influence, Teller decided not to sign the petition.
Teller wrote a letter in response to Szilard. Years later, when writing his memoirs, Teller reflected on this letter.
At the time, four of Teller’s colleagues were asked by the secret May to June 1945 Interim Committee. This group decided how the new weapons should be used. The committee’s Scientific Panel, led by Oppenheimer, concluded that immediate military use on Japan was the best option.
Teller later learned that Oppenheimer had been involved in the Interim Committee’s decision to drop the bombs, having secretly supported their immediate use. This was different from Teller’s earlier belief, based on his conversation with Oppenheimer, that the nation’s future should be left to politicians in Washington. After learning this, Teller’s relationship with Oppenheimer began to worsen.
In 1990, historian Barton Bernstein argued that Teller’s claim that he was a “covert dissenter” to the use of the bomb was not convincing. In his 2001 Memoirs, Teller stated that he had lobbied Oppenheimer but that Oppenheimer had convinced him to take no action and leave military decisions to the military. Teller claimed he was unaware that Oppenheimer and other scientists were being consulted about the weapon’s actual use and suggested Oppenheimer was being hypocritical.
Hydrogen bomb
In February 1946, Edward Teller left Los Alamos to return to the University of Chicago as a professor. He worked closely with Enrico Fermi and Maria Goeppert Mayer, whose research on atomic structure earned her the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963. Norris Bradbury, who had taken over as director of Los Alamos in 1945, had offered Teller a position as head of the Theoretical Division, but Teller declined the offer.
In April 1946, Teller attended a conference at Los Alamos to discuss progress on the "Super," a proposed hydrogen bomb. Scientists examined the properties of materials like deuterium and debated the design of the bomb. They concluded that Teller’s earlier belief in the bomb’s feasibility was overly optimistic. Concerns arose about the amount of deuterium needed and the energy lost during fusion. Adding tritium might lower the temperature required for ignition, but scientists did not know how much tritium would be needed or if it would help the reaction proceed.
Despite some scientists, like Robert Serber, opposing Teller’s ideas, he submitted a report stating the hydrogen bomb was possible and should be developed further. Klaus Fuchs, who attended the conference, shared details about the project with the Soviet Union. With John von Neumann, Teller proposed using implosion to ignite the bomb. Oppenheimer later joked that if the Soviets had used Teller’s design, it might have slowed their progress.
By 1949, Soviet-backed governments had taken control of parts of Eastern Europe, including Hungary, where Teller’s family lived. After the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb in 1949, President Harry Truman launched a program to develop a hydrogen bomb. Teller returned to Los Alamos in 1950 to work on the project. He wanted more theorists involved, but many scientists, including Fermi and Oppenheimer, believed the project was not technically possible or politically wise. At the time, no designs for the hydrogen bomb were workable. Soviet scientists later claimed they developed the bomb independently.
In 1950, Polish mathematician Stanislaw Ulam and colleague Cornelius Everett, with support from Fermi, showed that Teller’s earlier estimates about tritium were too low. Even with more tritium, energy loss during fusion would make the reaction difficult. In 1951, Teller and Ulam created a new design for a practical hydrogen bomb. Their work was described in a classified paper titled On Heterocatalytic Detonations I: Hydrodynamic Lenses and Radiation Mirrors. The exact roles of Teller and Ulam in creating the "Teller–Ulam design" remain unclear.
In a 1999 interview, Teller said the development of the hydrogen bomb was controversial. Physicist Hans Bethe called Teller’s contribution a "stroke of genius," but Teller disagreed. Others, like J. Carson Mark, argued that Teller could not have succeeded without Ulam’s help. Ulam claimed Teller only refined his original idea.
The breakthrough involved separating the fission and fusion parts of the bomb and using X-rays from the fission bomb to compress the fusion fuel—a process called "radiation implosion." Ulam suggested using mechanical shock to trigger fusion, but Teller realized X-rays would work more effectively. Some scientists later said the idea of using X-rays would have been obvious to others, but Teller’s experience with the "Greenhouse" tests in 1951 likely helped him think of it first.
Priscilla Johnson McMillan wrote that Teller did not credit Ulam’s role in the design and claimed "radiation implosion" was his idea. Teller refused to sign a patent application without Ulam’s approval. Thomas Powers noted that many scientists believed Teller unfairly took credit for the design.
After the Teller–Ulam design was proposed, scientists saw it as the solution they had long sought. Even Oppenheimer, who had opposed the project, called the idea "technically sweet." Teller was not chosen to lead the development project, possibly due to his difficult personality. In 1952, he joined the Livermore branch of the University of California Radiation Laboratory, which he had helped establish.
The first hydrogen bomb using the Teller–Ulam design, Ivy Mike, was tested on November 1, 1952. Teller did not attend the test, claiming he felt unwelcome at the site. He viewed the results through a seismograph in Berkeley. Some believed the Soviets, led by Andrei Sakharov, could have learned about the design from fallout analysis, but Soviet scientists later denied this. The U.S. government kept details of the bomb’s development secret, and press reports often credited Teller and Livermore Laboratory for the design, even though Los Alamos had developed it.
Many of Teller’s colleagues were upset that he took full credit for the design. With encouragement from Fermi, Teller wrote an article titled The Work of Many People to acknowledge others’ contributions.
Oppenheimer controversy
In 1954, Edward Teller became a subject of disagreement when he gave testimony against J. Robert Oppenheimer during a hearing about whether Oppenheimer should keep his security clearance. Teller and Oppenheimer had argued many times before at Los Alamos about topics related to fission and fusion research. At the hearing, Teller was the only scientist to say Oppenheimer should not be allowed to keep his security clearance.
When asked by an attorney from the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), Roger Robb, if he was suggesting Oppenheimer was not loyal to the United States, Teller responded:
Teller was then asked if he believed Oppenheimer was a "security risk," to which he said:
Teller also said that Oppenheimer’s views on the thermonuclear program were based mostly on whether the weapon was scientifically possible. He praised Oppenheimer’s leadership at Los Alamos, calling him a "very outstanding achievement" as both a scientist and administrator, and noted Oppenheimer had a "very quick mind" and was a "most wonderful and excellent director."
However, Teller later explained that he believed Oppenheimer had slowed progress on the thermonuclear program by not focusing enough on it at key times in his career. He said, "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 turning a disagreement about the hydrogen bomb project into a claim about Oppenheimer being a security risk, Teller made it easier for others to question Oppenheimer’s loyalty. This led to accusations that Oppenheimer might have been a Soviet spy, which ruined his career.
After the hearing, Oppenheimer’s security clearance was taken away. Many of Teller’s former colleagues disagreed with his testimony, and he was shunned by much of the scientific community. Later, Teller claimed he did not mean to harm Oppenheimer and even said he was trying to help him. However, evidence later showed this might not have been true. Six days before the hearing, Teller met with an AEC official and suggested making his testimony more damaging.
Teller always said his words did not cause major harm to Oppenheimer. In 2002, he claimed Oppenheimer was not "destroyed" by the hearing but was no longer involved in policy matters. He said his reaction was too strong because he had just learned about Oppenheimer’s failure to report an approach by Haakon Chevalier, who had asked Oppenheimer to help the Russians. Teller said he would have acted differently if he had known earlier.
Historian Richard Rhodes believed Oppenheimer’s clearance was likely to be revoked by AEC chairman Lewis Strauss regardless of Teller’s testimony. However, because Teller’s statements were the most damaging, he was blamed for the outcome. This caused Teller to lose relationships, such as with Robert Christy, who refused to shake his hand. This treatment showed how others viewed him later, forcing him to align with industrialists instead of scientists.
US government work and political advocacy
After the Oppenheimer controversy, Teller was avoided by many scientists but remained welcomed in government and military science groups. In addition to supporting nuclear energy, a strong nuclear weapons program, and nuclear testing, Teller worked to create safety rules for nuclear reactors as chair of the Reactor Safeguard Committee for the Atomic Energy Commission in the late 1940s. In the late 1950s, he led a project at General Atomics that designed research reactors where a nuclear meltdown could not occur. The TRIGA reactor, named for its use in training, research, isotopes, and General Atomic, has been built and used in hundreds of hospitals and universities worldwide for medical isotope production and research.
Teller supported increased defense spending to address the Soviet missile threat. He signed the 1958 report by the military sub-panel of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s Special Studies Project, which recommended a $3 billion annual increase in the United States’ military budget.
In 1956, Teller attended the Project Nobska conference, where topics included oceanography and nuclear weapons. During a discussion about a small nuclear warhead for the Mark 45 torpedo, he suggested the possibility of creating a one-megaton nuclear warhead small enough for the Polaris missile. J. Carson Mark from Los Alamos National Laboratory initially said it was not possible but later agreed that a half-megaton warhead of small size could be developed. This warhead, about thirty times the power of the Hiroshima bomb, met the needs of Admiral Arleigh Burke, who was present. As a result, the Navy shifted its missile program from Jupiter to Polaris by the end of the year.
From 1958 to 1960, Teller was director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which he helped establish with Ernest O. Lawrence. He later remained an associate director. He also led the committee that created the Space Sciences Laboratory at Berkeley and taught physics at the University of California, Berkeley. Teller strongly supported nuclear programs and continued to push for nuclear testing. He left his directorship at Livermore to focus on opposing a proposed test ban. He argued against the test ban in Congress and on television. Teller was also involved with the Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba, an anti-Castro group formed in the 1960s.
In 1963, Teller helped create the Department of Applied Science at the University of California, Davis and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which later honored him with an Edward Teller professorship. In 1975, he retired from both the laboratory and Berkeley, becoming director emeritus of Livermore and a Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Teller served on the Board of Directors of the Committee on the Present Danger, created in 1976, and joined President Reagan’s “White House Science Council” in 1982. After communism ended in Hungary in 1989, Teller visited his homeland and closely observed the political changes there.
Global climate change
Edward Teller was one of the first people to warn about the dangers of climate change, which is caused by burning fossil fuels. In a speech to members of the American Chemical Society in December 1957, Teller explained that the large amount of fuels containing carbon that had been burned since the mid-1800s was increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. He said this would "work like a greenhouse and cause the Earth's surface temperature to rise," and he calculated that if carbon dioxide levels increased by 10%, "a significant amount of polar ice might melt."
In 1959, at a meeting held by the American Petroleum Institute and Columbia University's Graduate School of Business to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the American oil industry, Edward Teller again warned about these issues.
Non-military uses of nuclear explosions
Edward Teller was a strong supporter of studying how nuclear explosives could be used for purposes other than military actions, such as in the United States' Operation Plowshare. One of his most debated ideas was using a very large hydrogen bomb to create a deep-water harbor more than a mile long and half a mile wide near Point Hope, Alaska. This harbor would have been used to transport resources like coal and oil. The Atomic Energy Commission approved Teller's plan in 1958, naming it Project Chariot. While the commission was preparing the site and removing the land from public use, Teller promoted the project's economic benefits but could not convince local leaders that it would be financially successful.
Other scientists expressed concerns that the project might harm local wildlife and the Inupiat people living nearby, who were not officially informed about the plan until March 1960. It was also discovered that the harbor would be blocked by ice for nine months each year. Due to financial challenges and worries about radiation-related health risks, the project was canceled in 1962.
Another idea supported by Teller was using nuclear explosions to extract oil from tar sands in northern Alberta, Canada. This plan was called Project Oilsands and received approval from the Alberta government. However, the Canadian government, led by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, rejected the plan because he opposed having nuclear weapons in Canada. After Diefenbaker left office, Canada later possessed nuclear weapons through a U.S. agreement from 1963 to 1984.
Teller also suggested using nuclear bombs to reduce hurricane damage. He believed that placing nuclear explosions in the Atlantic Ocean during conditions favorable for hurricane formation could create several smaller hurricanes instead of allowing one large one to develop naturally.
Nuclear technology and Israel
For about twenty years, Edward Teller gave advice to Israel on nuclear issues in general and on building a hydrogen bomb in particular. In 1952, Teller and Oppenheimer met with David Ben-Gurion in Tel Aviv. They told him that the best way to collect plutonium was to use natural uranium in a nuclear reactor. Starting in 1964, a connection between Teller and Israel was made by physicist Yuval Ne'eman, who shared similar political views. Between 1964 and 1967, Teller visited Israel six times. He gave lectures at Tel Aviv University and advised leaders in Israel’s scientific and security groups, as well as prime ministers and cabinet members.
In 1967, when Israel’s nuclear program was close to being finished, Teller told Ne'eman that he would inform the CIA that Israel had built nuclear weapons. He explained that this was justified by the events of the Six-Day War. After Ne'eman discussed this with Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, Teller shared the information with Carl Duckett, the head of the CIA’s Office of Science and Technology. It took one year for Teller to persuade the CIA that Israel had nuclear capability. The information was then sent to CIA Director Richard Helms, who passed it to President Lyndon B. Johnson. Teller also convinced the CIA to stop American efforts to inspect the Negev Nuclear Research Center in Dimona. In 1976, Duckett testified in Congress to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He said that after receiving information from an "American scientist," he created a National Intelligence Estimate about Israel’s nuclear capability.
In the 1980s, Teller visited Israel again to advise the government on building a nuclear reactor. Three decades later, Teller confirmed that during his visits, he decided Israel had nuclear weapons. After sharing this with the U.S. government, Teller reportedly said: "They [Israel] have it, and they were smart enough to trust their research instead of testing. They know that testing would cause problems."
Three Mile Island
In 1979, Teller had a heart attack and said it was caused by Jane Fonda. She had acted in the movie The China Syndrome, which showed an imaginary nuclear accident. The movie was released less than two weeks before the real Three Mile Island accident. Jane Fonda spoke against nuclear power while promoting the film. After the accident, Teller worked to support nuclear energy, testifying about its safety and reliability. Soon after, he had the heart attack. In July 1979, he signed an advertisement in The Washington Post with the headline "I was the only victim of Three-Mile Island." The ad began with:
Strategic Defense Initiative
In the 1980s, Teller started a strong effort to support what became known as the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which critics called "Star Wars." The idea involved using ground and satellite-based lasers, particle beams, and missiles to destroy incoming Soviet ICBMs. Teller worked with government agencies and gained approval from President Ronald Reagan for a plan to develop a system using satellites that used atomic weapons to launch X-ray lasers at enemy missiles. This was part of a larger research program focused on defending against nuclear weapons.
A scandal occurred when Teller and his associate Lowell Wood were accused of exaggerating the program's potential and possibly influencing the removal of a laboratory director, Roy Woodruff, who had tried to address mistakes in the project. His claims led to a joke in the scientific community, where a unit of unfounded optimism was humorously named "teller." One teller was so large that most events were measured in smaller units like nanotellers or picotellers.
Many scientists argued the system would not work. Hans Bethe, along with physicist Richard Garwin from IBM and colleague Kurt Gottfried from Cornell University, wrote an article in Scientific American that analyzed SDI. They concluded that an enemy could disable the system using decoys that would cost far less than the SDI program itself.
In 1987, Teller published a book titled Better a Shield than a Sword, which promoted civil defense and active protection systems. His views on lasers in SDI were published in two conference proceedings from 1986 to 1987.
Asteroid impact avoidance
After the 1994 Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet struck Jupiter, physicist Edward Teller suggested in a 1995 meeting at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that a group of American and Russian scientists who had worked on Cold War weapons should work together. Their goal was to design a nuclear explosive device with the power of one gigaton, which equals the energy of an asteroid 1 kilometer wide. This device would weigh about 25 to 30 tons, making it possible to launch using the Russian Energia rocket. It could instantly destroy an asteroid 1 kilometer in size or change the path of larger asteroids (more than 10 kilometers wide) if given a few months of warning. With one year of notice, the device could also be used to alter the course of rare short-period comets that originate from the Kuiper belt and pass near Earth within two years. These comets, which could be up to 100 kilometers wide, were hypothetically represented by Charon, a moon of Pluto.
Death and legacy
Edward Teller died in Stanford, California on September 9, 2003, when he was 95 years old. He had suffered a stroke two days before his death and had been dealing with health problems related to his age for a long time.
Teller strongly supported the use of nuclear weapons for strength, even though many of his wartime friends later felt sorry about the arms race. This made him a common example of the "mad scientist" image. In 1991, he received one of the first Ig Nobel Prizes for Peace for his work to change how people understand peace. He was also believed to have inspired the character of Dr. Strangelove in the 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove. During a 1999 interview with Scientific American, he was upset when asked about the movie and said, "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."
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Isidor I. Rabi once said, "It would have been a better world without Teller."
In 1981, Teller became a founding member of the World Cultural Council. Around the time of his 90th birthday, he wished for scientists at Lawrence Livermore to provide him with "excellent predictions—calculations and experiments—about the interiors of the planets" for his 100th birthday.
In 1986, he was awarded the Sylvanus Thayer Award by the United States Military Academy. He was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 1948 and became a member of several organizations, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Nuclear Society, and the American Physical Society. He received many honors, such as the Albert Einstein Award in 1958, the Golden Plate Award in 1961, the Enrico Fermi Award in 1962, the Herzl Prize in 1978, the Eringen Medal in 1980, the Harvey Prize in 1975, the National Medal of Science in 1983, the Presidential Citizens Medal in 1989, and the Corvin Chain in 2001. He was also named as part of the "US Scientists" group in Time magazine's 1960 People of the Year. An asteroid, 5006 Teller, is named after him. In 2003, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush, less than two months before his death.
His final paper, published after his death, promoted the building of a prototype liquid fluoride thorium reactor. The reason for writing this paper was explained by his co-author, Ralph Moir, in 2007.
Teller was portrayed by David Suchet in the 1980 TV miniseries Oppenheimer, by Miki Manojlović in the 1987 TV miniseries Race for the Bomb, and by Benny Safdie in the 2023 film Oppenheimer.