Edward Teller: The Real Dr. Strangelove (review)

This excellent biography not only delves into the enigmatic character of this powerful twentieth-century scientist but also provides valuable insights into the role of science and technology in the Cold War. Goodchild, a noted biographer of J. Robert Oppenheimer, uses newly available letters from Teller's friend, physicist Maria Goppert Mayer, as well as personal interviews with Teller and his associates to enrich this work.

The book begins with a description of Teller's family and a childhood in Hungary that was climaxed in 1919 by the brief Communist takeover of the country. This experience embedded a deep distrust of Russia that was to last throughout his life. Other painful experiences in his childhood and adolescence contributed to his personal insecurity. The narrative follows his early professional career from his Ph.D. work with Werner Heisenberg at Munich, a three-year term as an assistant professor at the University of Göttingen, a research fellowship with Neils Bohr in Copenhagen, and finally to the United States where he accepted George Gamow's offer of a position in the physics department of George Washington University.

In 1939, learning of the discovery of fission, Teller, along with Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner, two other emigrant physicists, persuaded Albert Einstein to send the letter to President Roosevelt that became the catalyst for the Manhattan Project. After Pearl Harbor, Teller joined the group of scientists at the University of Chicago who were working on the development of the first nuclear weapon, a fission bomb. Here he began to develop his ideas for a more powerful thermonuclear fusion bomb known as the "Super." While working with the leaders of the nascent Manhattan Project in Chicago, he was invited to Los Alamos by J. Robert Oppenheimer.

At Los Alamos, Teller, still preoccupied with the "Super," was disappointed when Oppenheimer, the lab director, appointed Hans Bethe to head the Theoretical Division. This was the beginning of the rift between Teller and Oppenheimer which culminated in Oppenheimer's loss of security clearance in 1954. Teller witnessed the Trinity test in July 1945 and, after the war ended, remained at Los Alamos to continue work on the "Super." This work was driven in no small part by his fear that Russia would become a more dangerous enemy than Germany. Teller continued to promote the "Super" in the political and scientific communities despite the opposition of many members of both.

In 1949, bolstered by the Soviets' detonation of a fission weapon, Teller increased his efforts to convince the United States government to develop the "Super." His alliance with members of Congress, Lewis Strauss, an Atomic Energy (AEC) Commissioner, and a few scientific colleagues was opposed by a group of scientists that included Oppenheimer. In early 1950, President Truman directed the AEC to develop the hydrogen bomb as a defensive measure against any possible aggressor. However, the work on the "Super" at Los Alamos was impeded by a committee chaired by Oppenheimer which recommended that the laboratory should concentrate on fission weapons. Teller again prevailed and a fission bomb was used to initiate the fusion of a small amount of a deuterium-tritium mixture in the George test in the Pacific in 1951.

The first full-scale thermonuclear explosion, the Mike test, occurred in November 1952 with an absent Teller watching its effects on a seismograph from a California laboratory. The success of the test and the animosity between Teller and the scientists at Los Alamos led him to ally with Ernest Lawrence to form a second nuclear weapons laboratory on the site of an old naval air station at Livermore, California. A keen rivalry developed between the two laboratories that lasted through the remainder of the...