Edward Teller (January 15, 1908)
The life cycle 124875
Important years of life
1924 7
1931 5
1936 1
1937 2
1939 4
1943 8
1951 7
1958 5
1963 1
1964 2
1966 4
1970 8
1978 7
1985 5
1990 1
1991 2
1993 4
1997 8
September 9, 2003 = 2021 = 5
wiki information
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…
In early 1943, the Los Alamos laboratory was established in Los Alamos, New Mexico to design an atomic bomb, with Oppenheimer as its director. Teller moved there in March 1943. Apparently, Teller managed to annoy his neighbors there by playing the piano late in the night
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
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
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
1958 Albert Einstein Award 🙂
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
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.
Teller established the Department of Applied Science at the University of California, Davis and LLNL in 1963, which holds the Edward Teller endowed professorship in his honor
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
Throughout his life, Teller was known both for his scientific ability and his difficult interpersonal relations and volatile personality, and is considered one of the inspirations for the character Dr. Strangelove in the 1964 movie of the same name.
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
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