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Nuclear physics

Nuclear physics

Teller has no regrets over bomb

22 May 1998

"I am still asked on occasion whether I am not sorry for having invented such a terrible thing as the hydrogen bomb" writes Edward Teller, the Hungarian-born physicist popularly known as father of the H-bomb, in this week's Science magazine. "The answer is, I am not." Teller's vindication of his invention comes in an essay entitle "Science and morality" in which he reflects on his past, and how both science and politics became intertwined over the past seventy years of his life.

Teller played important roles in the development of the atomic and hydrogen bomb. In 1939 he chauffeured another Hungarian physicist, Leó Szilárd, to a meeting with Albert Einstein. Szilárd persuaded Einstein to write to President Roosevelt about the need to develop an atomic bomb. This letter led to the establishment of US atomic programme.

While working on the Manhattan Project, Teller dreamt up a more powerful bomb – the hydrogen bomb. Although many physicists were not convinced that his design would work, Teller was instrumental in persuading Harry Truman, who had followed Roosevelt as President, to approve the project.

In the essay Teller says that only part of him wanted to build the H-bomb, and that the larger part wanted to continue to do ‘pure’ science. However, the arrest of his friends in Russia, such as Lev Landau, made him determined to protect the US against Soviet expansion.

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