(Budapest, January 15th, 1908 – Stanford, California, September 9th, 2003)
One of the great pioneers of modern physics, an enthusiastic proponent of nuclear fusion. According to Eugene Wigner "one of the most thoughtful statesmen of science."
He completed his secondary school studies in the excellent Model Grammar School in Trefort utca, Budapest. In 1925 he enrolled in the department of chemistry of the Technical University, Budapest.
Soon afterwards continued his studies at the University of Karlsruhe in Germany, graduated with a degree in chemical engineering. However, - fascinated by quantum mechanics, switched from learning chemistry, which he was doing at the behest of his father, he went to the department of physics of the university of Munich. In the following academic year he continued his studies in Leipzig where Heisenberg gave lectures who had a deep impression on him.
It was a time of revolution and extraordinary breakthroughs in physics and throughout his life, Teller has been a participant in the development of nuclear physics research. Studied chemical physics and spectroscopy, he began with atomic and molecular physics and continued with nuclear physics, plasma physics, astrophysics, and statistical mechanics.
As Heisenberg's student in theoretical physics, Teller earned his Ph.D. degree in 1930. The same year, he published his first paper, "Hydrogen Molecular Ion," in which he applied quantum mechanics to the chemical bond of the positively charged hydrogen molecule.
That same year, he made friends with young Russian physicists George Gamow and Lev Landau.
During the next decade, Teller continued working on electron structure in molecular physics at the University of Göttingen. He joined a scientific circle of researchers where the leading figures were Heisenberg, Bohr and Einstein.
With Heisenberg in 1933, Teller wrote another significant paper. Later in 1937 the collaborations with his students and colleagues led to a paper coauthored with Emil Jahn on the Jahn-Teller effect which describes the geometrical distortion that electron clouds undergo in certain situations and makes statement about the role of electron energy levels in forming the shape of molecules with more than two atoms. This plays prominently in the description of chemical reactions of metals, and in particular the coloration of certain metallic dyes. . This is pure mathematical thesis remains one of
Teller's most significant contributions and was verified experimentally in 1952.
After Hitler came into power, in 1934 first he went to Denmark to join Niels Bohr's group of researchers. In Bohr's institute he met Gamow, a Russian physicist who was also a political refugee and who soon obtained a position as a professor at the Washington University. A year later, when Teller was already working in London, he invited Teller to be his partner professor. Teller arrived in the United State in August 1935.
In Washington Gamow and Teller worked in close co-operation. Their first publication appeared the same year. They created the so-called Gamow-Teller theory, a still-important extension of the theory of beta decay which describes the characteristics of subatomic particles in the course of radioactive decay. They also studied the atomic processes of astrophysics.
Teller, Gamow and others' research in thirties of the century produced important theoretical results on the forces holding nuclei together, formed models of the atomic nucleus, and described neutron scattering in molecular gases and crystal lattices.
In 1939, at the Washington Conference on Theoretical Physics, attendees received the information: the German scientists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman had discovered fission. Bombarding uranium with neutrons, they had split the nucleus and the process released a great amount of energy. The question which came was whether a splitting nucleus would release enough additional neutrons to start a fission chain reaction. During the next two months Leo Szilard confirmed the feasibility of such a chain reaction.
Teller was one of those who immediately realised the danger of the discovery. With Leó Szilárd and Jenő Wigner they managed to convince Einstein to write a letter to President Roosevelt about an atombomb-building project. 
In 1941 Teller obtained citizenship and joined the American Manhattan Project the aim of which to produce the atomic bomb. He obtained initial federal funding for chain-reaction research, performing experiments by the fall of 1941 with Fermi, Szilard. Their work led to the first controlled nuclear reaction.
He worked on the first nuclear reactor in Chicago where research was consolidated at the University of Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory, then in Berkeley, but he soon started to work in the laboratory of Los Alamos where the first atomic bomb was made under the leadership of Oppenheimer. Teller made important calculations helping John von Neumann to develop mathematical methods to determine the critical mass and nuclear efficiency of the bomb. He devised the implosion calculations to the first atomic bomb.
From the beginning of his work on the fission weapon, he already studied the possibility whether the heat generated by the atomic bomb working on the basis of atomic fission can ignite a thermonuclear reaction – i.e. uniting light nuclei - of an even higher efficiency, the hydrogen bomb. Scientists knew that fusion theoretically could release more energy per unit mass than fission. He had conceptualized a fusion weapon, in which a fission bomb would be used to heat a mass of deuterium (a heavy form of hydrogen) to start a fusion reaction, and was hoping that they can work on both weapons in Los Alamos. But because of the difficulties of the development of the atomic bomb the fusion energy research was temporarily cancelled.
When the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb, president Truman ordered the fusion weapon to be developed in Los Alamos, and in 1952 the first American hydrogen bomb was successfully tested.
Teller, seeing that the scientists of Los Alamos were not supporting unambiguously the development of the next generation of weapons, did his best to establish a new thermonuclear laboratory.
As a result of this the American Atomic Energy Committee founded the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in North California, and Teller became its advisor, deputy manager, and finally its director. Throughout his life, he has been its guiding presence.
Nuclear fission has the potential for many civilian uses. Teller was fighter of nuclear energy for peaceful uses, particularly as an alternative to other sources of energy. His activity in the last few decades was aimed first of all at increasing the safety and reliability of atomic power-stations.
In 1947, he became the first chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission's Committee on Reactor Safeguards.
In 1956, Teller led a study that ended in the design of an inherently safe reactor. The TRIGA (Test, Research, Isotopes-General Atomics) reactor was invented that summer, the result of a Teller idea. Some 60 TRIGA reactors were later built around the world and led to many important and varied uses in nuclear education, research, and medicine.
In the seventies Teller encouraged fusion energy research, and in the eighties he initiated and was a strong supporter of President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, the development of the anti-rocket system which became known as Star War. He has always been for strong military defence.
Since 1975 until his death he has been a researcher at the Hoover Institute of Stanford University and he lived in Palo Alto, California.
Memberships: He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Nuclear Society. Honoured member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1990), honorary doctor of the Technical University, Budapest.
Honours: Among his many honors, Teller was awarded the Joseph Priestley commemorative prize (1957), Albert Einstein prize (1958), Enrico Fermi prize (1962), Robins prize (1963), Harvey prize (1975), the National Medal of Science (1982) by President Ronald Reagan, the Silvanus Thayer prize (1986), Presidential Citizens Medal (1989), For Hungarians commemorative medal (1993) Presidential Medal of Freedom (2003).
His writings include The Legacy of Hiroshima (with Allen Brown, 1962), The Constructive Uses of Nuclear Explosives (with others, 1968), and Memoirs: A Twentieth-Century Journey in Science and Politics (2001).
See also: an interview with Edward Teller.
