Edward Teller, Ph.D.

Of all the scientists who worked on the U.S. nuclear weapons program none have led a more controversial career than Edward Teller. Teller was recognized by most of his colleagues as being one of the most imaginative and creative physicists alive.

His native land was Budapest, Hungary where he was born in 1908. He grew up there during turbulent times and was pleased to leave his homeland in 1926 to study in Germany. In 1930 he got his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Leipzig. In 1935 Teller immigrated to the United States to take up a teaching position at George Washington University. His postdoctoral research had been in quantum mechanics. At George Washington University, he would begin a very productive collaboration with Russian emigre George Gamow in nuclear physics. At the outbreak of World War II, scientists became aware that the nucleus of a uranium atom could be split releasing enormous amounts of energy. Teller was among the first scientists recruited to work on the Manhattan Project that was working to develop such a bomb. Before the United States even built an A-bomb, Teller was already thinking about the hydrogen bomb.

Following the war, he joined the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and served as its director. He also served concurrently as a Professor of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He was not only an advocate of a strong nuclear program, but proposed many peaceful uses of nuclear technologies. In 1975 he retired and was named Director Emeritus of the Livermore Laboratory and was also appointed Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution. 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."

Teller died this past September in Stanford, California. He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Nuclear Society. Among honors he received were the Albert Einstein Award, the Enrico Fermi Award and the National Medal of Science. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush less than two months before he died.