Back Edward Teller Afrikaans إدوارد تيلر Arabic ادوارد تيلر ARZ Edward Teller AST Edvard Teller Azerbaijani ادوارد تلر AZB Эдвард Тэлер Byelorussian Едуард Телер Bulgarian এডওয়ার্ড টেলার Bengali/Bangla Edward Teller BS
Edward Teller | |
|---|---|
Teller Ede | |
 Teller in 1958 | |
| Born | January 15, 1908 |
| Died | September 9, 2003 (aged 95) Stanford, California, U.S. |
| Citizenship |
|
| Alma mater | |
| Known for | |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 2 |
| Awards |
|
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics (theoretical) |
| Institutions | |
| Thesis | Über das Wasserstoffmolekülion (1930) |
| Doctoral advisor | Werner Heisenberg |
| Doctoral students |
|
| Other notable students | Jack Steinberger |
| Signature | |
 | |
Edward Teller (Hungarian: Teller Ede; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian-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. He had a volatile personality, and according to Richard Rhodes in his book Dark Sun, was "driven by his megaton ambitions, had a messianic complex, and displayed autocratic behavior."[1] A thermonuclear design he devised was an Alarm Clock model bomb with a yield of 1000 MT (1 GT of TNT) and proposed delivering it by boat or submarine. It would be capable of incinerating an entire continent.[1] To David Lilienthal (chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission), men such as Teller and Lawrence might have appeared to be a "a group of scientists who can only be described as drooling with the prospect [of nuclear war] and 'bloodthirsty'."[2]
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.[3] According to Freeman Dyson, Teller though about his problems using basic principles of physics and often discussed with other cohorts to make headway through difficult problems. This was seen when he worked with Stanislaw Ulam to get a workable thermonuclear fusion bomb design (a solution to Teller's own classical thermonuclear bomb proposal) but later temperamentally (and with fury) dismissed Ulam's aid. Herbert York stated that Teller utilized Ulam's general idea of compression and heating to start thermonuclear fusion to generate his own sketch of a "Super" bomb that would work.[1] Prior to Ulam's idea, Teller's classical Super was essentially a system for heating (using a fission bomb primary) uncompressed liquid deuterium to the point, Teller hoped, when it would sustain thermonuclear burning.[1] It was, in essense a simple idea from physical principles, which Teller pursued with a ferocious tenacity even if he was wrong or shown that it wouldn't work. To get support from Washington for his Super weapon project, Teller proposed a boosted nuclear fission explosion as the "George" shot of Operation Greenhouse.[1]
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.[4] 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 security clearance hearing of his former Los Alamos Laboratory superior, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific community ostracized Teller.
Teller continued to find support from the U.S. government and military research establishment, particularly for his advocacy for nuclear energy development, a strong nuclear arsenal, and a vigorous nuclear testing program. In his later years, he advocated controversial technological solutions to military and civilian problems, including a plan to excavate an artificial harbor in Alaska using a thermonuclear explosive in what was called Project Chariot, and Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. Teller was a recipient of the Enrico Fermi Award and the Albert Einstein Award. He died on September 9, 2003, in Stanford, California, at 95.
- ^ a b c d e Rhodes, Richard (1995). Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (1st ed.). New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 456. ISBN 978-0-684-82414-7.
- ^ Rhodes, Richard (1995). Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (1st ed.). New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 402. ISBN 978-0-684-82414-7.
- ^ Goodchild 2004, p. 36.
- ^ Metropolis, Nicholas; Rosenbluth, Arianna W.; Rosenbluth, Marshall N.; Teller, Augusta H.; Teller, Edward (1953). "Equation of State Calculations by Fast Computing Machines". Journal of Chemical Physics. 21 (6): 1087–1092. Bibcode:1953JChPh..21.1087M. doi:10.1063/1.1699114. OSTI 4390578. S2CID 1046577.