Judging Edward Teller: A Closer Look at One of the Most Influential Scientists of the Twentieth Century (review)

Edward Teller has been revered as the father of the hydrogen bomb, a brilliant physicist who helped America win the cold war. He has also been reviled as the man who crucified J. Robert Oppenheimer and spurred a costly race for ever more destructive and dangerous nuclear weapons. In Judging Edward Teller, Istvan Hargittai weighs these diverse judgments into the most synthetic account of Teller’s life to date, with mixed results.

As a fellow Hungarian, scientist, and acquaintance of Teller’s, Hargittai is uniquely positioned to shed fresh light on Teller’s life. Using papers from the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security Services, Hargittai provides a fascinating and amusing account of failed efforts to enlist first Teller, and then his sister, in communist espionage. Hargittai also makes good use of the Teller papers in the Hoover Library at Stanford. However, much of the book relies heavily on some problematic secondary sources, and especially scientists’ memoirs, while neglecting a large body of historical scholarship surrounding Teller.

Reliance on two particularly suspect sources—an outdated hagiography by Stanley Blumberg and Gwinn Owens (1976), and Teller’s own 2001 Memoirs—leads the book to repeat well-known errors. Hargittai’s use of Memoirs is odd, because he thoughtfully discusses Teller’s early-developed tendency of revising history and coping with difficulty by “denial” (p. 85). Hargittai also judges conflicting secondary sources, noting, for example, mistakes in Peter Goodchild’s 2004 biography (p. 235). But these discussions reveal little that is new. Instead, the book’s primary contribution is synthetic—it improves on two problematic biographies of Teller primarily because it is the first to depict the fullness of Teller’s life, not only as a controversial political figure, but also as a scientist.

Hargittai’s narrative follows three “exiles” (Teller’s word). First, the rise of communism and anti-Semitism in 1920s Hungary encouraged Teller and other rising Jewish scientists in Budapest to study in Germany. The rise of the Nazis in Germany uprooted Teller again in 1933, and he eventually landed at George Washington University, as a full professor in physics. In describing these first two “exiles,” Hargittai usefully captures several of Teller’s scientific collaborations and achievements in lay terms. Teller was a scientific “digger, not a driller” (p. 104)—that is, a scientist who engages many different questions, rather than focusing on one. Teller’s digging eventually led him to nuclear physics and the Manhattan Project, where he became fascinated with the prospect of developing a fusion bomb—but was forced to focus instead on the simpler fission weapon.

Teller’s third “exile” was the result of his testimony against Robert Oppenheimer, the head of the Manhattan Project and icon of physics, in the loyalty-security hearings of 1954. Though many painted Oppenheimer as angel and Teller as devil, Hargittai judges Teller more favorably. Oppenheimer privately betrayed friends, whereas Teller proved loyal to a fault. Nonetheless, Hargittai acknowledges that Teller’s testimony was designed to carry strong negative weight—a fact that made him a pariah among many scientists. Whereas Teller’s first two exiles nurtured his scientific collaborations, this third exile undermined his scientific research. Teller instead became a public and political “monomaniac with many manias,” advocating aggressive nuclear weapons development at every turn.

Several chapters chronicle Teller’s political campaigns, such as his opposition to limits on nuclear testing, and his advocacy of President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, or “Star Wars” missile defense program). Unfortunately these chapters reveal little new, and a tendency to rely on scientists’ memoirs, rather than more comprehensive historical work, sometimes skews the account of these political debates. For example, Hargittai describes SDI as a “policy” (p. 403) and highlights Teller’s approach—the X-ray laser. But as a tangible research and development program, SDI redirected work on a far broader range...