 the one thing in my life that I am completely happy about.”
In 1960, Teller accepted a joint appointment as professor of physics-at-large for UC and as associate director for Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (both the Berkeley and Livermore sites). In 1965, he was named associate director for physics at Livermore. Upon his retirement in 1975 from UC, Teller became director emeritus at Lawrence Livermore and joined the Hoover Institution at Stanford University as a senior research fellow. At the Hoover Institution, he specialized in international and national policies concerning defense and energy.
In support of SDI during the 1980s, Teller promoted the concepts of x-ray lasers driven by nuclear explosives and nonnuclear “brilliant pebbles” satellites. Even then, at an advanced age, he wanted to contribute to both science and his adopted homeland in any way possible. Above all, Teller believed that being a scientist meant solving the world’s biggest problems.
Focus on Applied Science
Teller’s desire to see practical results from basic science research influenced his leadership of “Teller Tech,” the Department of Applied Science at Livermore, which was established as part of the College of Engineering at UC Davis in the early 1960s. His founding of Teller Tech was based on the idea of encouraging young applied scientists to take advantage of the latest developments in basic science.
Teller had always been inspired to teach. In the U.S., he taught successively at George Washington University, Columbia University, University of Chicago, and at several UC campuses, eventually holding the prestigious title of University of California Professor Emeritus. Many of his graduate students went on to become prominent scientists, including Chen Ning Yang from Chicago, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957. In 1963, at the height of the Cold War, Teller worked with Fannie and John Hertz to found the Hertz Foundation Graduate Fellowship Program to provide training for innovative applied scientists and engineers.
Teller considered the advancement of nuclear power one of the most important applications of science and engineering. In the late 1940s, he served as a member of the General Advisory Committee of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and chaired the Reactor Safeguard Committee. In his desire to make nuclear power plants safe, Teller identified operator error as the first problem to be solved, and he conceived the idea of burying reactors to avoid a catastrophic release of radiation. In the late 1950s, during the summer Teller spent at General Atomics in San Diego, he challenged Freeman Dyson, Frederic de Hoffmann, and others to design a small, ultrasafe research reactor. The General Atomics team succeeded with TRIGA®.
During the last year of his life, when Teller was almost completely blind, he wrote a paper with Livermore physicist Ralph Moir on thorium-burning reactors sited underground. This reactor design would use molten salt technology either without reprocessing for proliferation resistance or with reprocessing to maximize resources. Teller argued for leaving the fission products stored underground at the reactor site indefinitely or, if required, eventually transporting them to a dedicated repository. This paper, his last, was published in 2005 in Nuclear Technology.
In applying science to issues of national importance, Teller tirelessly supported collaboration and openness. He believed advances in national security and research were stronger when conducted in the open. Teller was instrumental in the declassification of magnetic energy research. Nuckolls recalls that “Teller argued magnetic fusion had little, if anything, to do with weapons and was potentially a major force for good.”
One of Teller’s great accomplishments at Livermore was promoting the use of computers to advance applied science. He was influenced by his long association with John von Neumann of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, who helped pioneer the first electronic computers. Throughout its history, Livermore has been a world leader in usi