Journal 132 – Edward Teller – a father of a hydrogen bomb

Edward Teller was a famous American scientist. He passed away on September 9, 2003, at his house at campus University of Stanford in California. He was 95. E. Teller is known as the father of the hydrogen bomb in the USA.

It’s impossible to describe briefly Teller’s academic career and achievements. I will remind only more interesting events from his long and full of adventures life. I will try to select these, which have a political aspect.

E. Teller was born into a Jewish family on January 15, 1908, in Budapest. His family was wealthy and high educated. He grew up during a particularly turbulent time in Hungarian history. It was 20th years of XX century. Nicholas Horthy, anti-Semitic fascist dictator, ruled Hungary in those times.

In 1926 E. Teller left his homeland and moved to Germany. He wanted to study a chemical engineering. Soon, he lost his interest to this subject and studied physics in Munich. In 1930, he got his Ph.D. from the University of Leipzig. E. Teller lost in Germany his sole at the streetcar accident.

Teller’s promising academic career broke Hitlerism upheaval. In 1933, A. Hitler took power in Germany. He was cruel and anti-Semitic dictator. Teller had to leave Germany, otherwise he would be persecuted and sentence to death, as all Jewish in this country (Holocaust). E. Teller moved to Denmark. There he had happiness to meet N. Bohr and to work under his leadership. Henrik David Bohr, 1885-1962, was at that time a famous physicist in the world. He won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1922. E. Teller stayed in this Scandinavian country only one year. The USA was the next episode in Teller’s interesting life. I will tell you about it in the next journal.