Edward teller biography book

American physicist (1908–2003)

The native form of this personal name is Teller Ede. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.

Edward Teller (Hungarian: Teller Ede; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian and American theoretical physicist and chemical engineer who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" and one of the creators of the Teller–Ulam design based on Stanisław Ulam's design.

Born in Austria-Hungary in 1908, Teller emigrated to the United States in the 1930s, one of the many so-called "Martians", a group of prominent Hungarian scientist émigrés. He made numerous contributions to nuclear and molecular physics, spectroscopy (in particular the Jahn–Teller and Renner–Teller effects), and surface physics. His extension of Enrico Fermi's theory of beta decay, in the form of Gamow–Teller transitions, provided an important stepping stone in its application, while the Jahn–Teller effect and the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) theory have retained their original formulation and are still mainstays in physics and chemistry.

Teller made contributions to Thomas–Fermi theory, the precursor of density functional theory, a standard modern tool in the quantum mechanical treatment of complex molecules. In 1953, with Nicholas Metropolis, Arianna Rosenbluth, Marshall Rosenbluth, and Augusta Teller, Teller co-authored a paper that is a standard starting point for the applications of the Monte Carlo method to statistical mechanics and the Markov chain Monte Carlo literature in Bayesian statistics. Teller was an early member of the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bomb. He made a serious push to develop the first fusion-based weapons, but ultimately fusion bombs only appeared after World War II. He co-founded the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and was its director or associate director. After his controversial negative testimony in the Oppenheimer secu

""Excellent. An interesting, thorough, and objective discussion of the life of Edward Teller, a brilliant but controversial scientist.”-Charles Townes, Nobel laureate, University of California at Berkeley“A must read for those who wish an accurate accounting of Teller and his associates who led the free world into the nuclear era.”-Harold M. Agnew, former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, former chairman of the US General Advisory Committee ACDA“Recommended for college and research libraries' history of science collections and is highly recommended for lay readers with a penchant for science.”-Library Journal'This is a fascinating and educational read. A particularly significant aspect of this text is the light it shines on the struggles and conflicts that ethics plays within science…This book would be a great choice for an advanced or secondary college class that integrates the history of science and physics.”-NSTA Recommends

Includes bibliographical references and index

How many seconds in a year? Robert Oppenheimer

In the Matter ofJ. Robert Oppenheimer -- Index

The story of Edward Teller is the story of the twentieth century. Born in Hungary in 1908, Teller witnessed the rise of Nazism and anti-Semitism, two world wars, the McCarthy era, and the changing face of big science. A brilliant and controversial figure, Teller brings to these events a perspective that is at once surprising and insightful. Edward Teller is perhaps best known for his belief in freedom through strong defense. But this extraordinary memoir at last reveals the man behind the headlines -- passionate and humorous, devoted and loyal. Never before has Teller told his story as fully as he does here. We learn Teller's true position on everything from the bombing of Japan to the pursuit of weapons research in the post-war years. In clear and compelling prose, Teller chronicles the people and events that shaped him as a scientist, beginning with his early love of music and math, and continuing with his study of quantum physics under Werner Heisenberg. Present at many of the pivotal moments in modern science, Teller also describes his relationships with some of the century's greatest minds -- Einstein, Bohr, Fermi, Szilard, von Neumann -- and offers an honest assessment of the development of the atomic and hydrogen bombs, the founding of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, and his complicated relationship with J. Robert Oppenheimer. He also offers, for the first time, a moving portrait of his childhood, his marriage and family life, and his deep friendship with physicist Maria Mayer. Writing about those aspects of his life that have had important public consequences -- from his conservative politics to his relationships with scientists and presidents -- Teller reveals himself to be a man with deep beliefs about liberty, security, and the moral responsibility

From Memoirs: A Twentieth-Century Journey in Science and Politics by Edward Teller

As 1939 began, I was looking forward to seeing Fermi at the fifth theoretical conference at George Washington University, scheduled for January 19–20. Much to Geo’s [George Gamow’s] and my pleasure, Niels Bohr, who had just arrived from Copenhagen to work for a few weeks at Princeton, was also going to participate in the program.

Bohr arrived at Gamow’s home late in the afternoon the day before the conference began. An hour or so later, Geo called me in agitation: “Bohr has gone crazy.  He says uranium splits.” That was all of Geo’s message. Within half an hour, I realized what Bohr was talking about. If the uranium nucleus (the heaviest of the naturally occurring elements) were to split, it could split in a variety of ways. That would account for the many simultaneously produced radioactivities.

[Lise] Meitner’s question had been answered, the tool [Leo] Szilard had wished for was now available, and Nazi Germany might well develop a devastating new weapon. My sleep that night was uneasy.

The subject of the conference was low-temperature physics and superconductivity, at that time an unexplained phenomenon. But Bohr was Bohr, and news is news. So Geo opened the conference by announcing (this time politely) that Bohr had something to say. Bohr then described the work in Nazi Germany, the conclusion that fission had occurred, and the decisive confirmation of fission in Copenhagen.

***

Fission was an amazing discovery. Hahn had promptly written to his friend Lise Meitner, an Austrian Jew who had been forced to leave her position at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute only a few months before. Meitner, together with her nephew-collaborator Otto Frisch, who was in Copenhagen, immediately designed an experiment to verify the news. If uranium split in two, the fragments would move apart at high speed and lose many electrons. The highly charged fra