Edward Teller

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Edward Teller: the real Dr. Strangelove

By Peter Goodchild

Harvard University press, $29.95, 466 pages

Reveiwed by Jeffrey Marsh

Edward Teller (1908-2003) had one of the longest and most noteworthy careers in the history of science. He made important contributions to nuclear physics in the 1930s and was a leading figure in the inception of the World War II Manhattan Project. He is most famous, though, as "the father of the hydrogen bomb," a title bestowed upon him in the 1950s which reflects both his role in the technical breakthrough that made construction of the H-bomb possible and the dogged political battle he waged against the scientific establishment to continue research on the bomb.

But perhaps the most remarkable of all his achievements occurred when he was in his 70s, when the "Star Wars" missile defense concept he advocated was enthusiastically endorsed by President Ronald Reagan and helped deliver the coup de grace to the Soviet Union's ambitions to compete militarily with the United States.

Peter Goodchild is a BBC television producer whose earlier works include major TV and written biographies of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the celebrated leader of the Manhattan Project. What he learned then about Teller inspired Mr. Goodchild to embark upon this massive work, which answers just about any question you may have about Dr. Teller's life and work.

Edward Teller was born in Budapest into a cultured and highly assimilated Hungarian-Jewish family. The family's placid life was disrupted when Bela Kun's communist uprising following World War I took over Hungary, requisitioning part of the Teller home in its revolutionary zeal. The communists were overthrown after four months, but the new regime led by Admiral Horthy was highly antisemitic and, among other things, imposed quotas on the number of university places and government jobs available to Jews.

Young Edward's academic brilliance won him first prizes in both physics and mathematics in a nationwide competition for high school graduates, and he left Hungary to study in Germany, where he earned a Ph.D. under Werner Heisenberg, a founder of the new quantum mechanics, who made him his assistant. When Hitler took power, he joined the exodus of Jewish scientists, first moving to Copenhagen.