author
Edward Teller
1908–2003
A brilliant and deeply controversial physicist, he helped shape the nuclear age and became one of its most forceful public voices. His life moved from early quantum theory in Europe to the Manhattan Project, the hydrogen bomb, and decades of debate over science, war, and national security.
1 Audiobook
Our Nuclear Future: Facts, Dangers and Opportunities
by Edward Teller, Albert L. Latter
About the author
Born in Budapest in 1908, Edward Teller studied in Germany and Denmark before fleeing Europe as Nazism rose. He settled in the United States, where he became part of an extraordinary generation of émigré scientists and worked on major problems in quantum and molecular physics as well as nuclear science.
Teller took part in the Manhattan Project during World War II, but he is most closely associated with the development of the hydrogen bomb. He later worked at the University of California, helped found Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and remained an influential advocate for nuclear weapons research and missile defense.
He was admired for his scientific energy and intellect, but he was also one of the most disputed figures in modern science, especially because of his role in the 1954 security hearing against J. Robert Oppenheimer. He died in California in 2003, leaving behind a legacy that is inseparable from the moral and political arguments of the twentieth century.