ding to Livermore physicist Lowell Wood, Teller was a “mind warrior” because he fought the Cold War with his brain and not his body. “He persuaded a lot of people to do likewise,” says Wood, who worked closely with Teller at the Laboratory. Another measure of Teller’s influence can be seen in the indirect effect his ideas had on Soviet military and political leaders. In an effort to accelerate the pace of research and development of thermonuclear weapons, Teller campaigned for the establishment of a second U.S. nuclear design laboratory. Former Soviet officials acknowledged that the creation of Livermore to augment the efforts at Los Alamos convinced them that the Soviet Union also needed a second nuclear design laboratory. That laboratory was created five years after Livermore opened.
Teller believed that strengthening national security was a personal obligation. Former Livermore physicist Edward Turano, now associate director of technology for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, says, “Teller was obsessed with finding favorable solutions for the advancement of humanity. He pondered how we could create and inspire new science and technology that could be used for good, while stressing the need for international coalitions. Teller and I would discuss how the proliferation of nuclear materials and technology was inevitable. He wanted to counter this threat by encouraging international safeguards and working toward worldwide collaborative concepts such as a global missile defense shield.”
Complete Understanding of Physics
Teller’s approach to thinking through problems from fundamental principles went beyond basic science into the applied arena. “He was so much more than a theoretical physicist,” says Laboratory Director Emeritus John Nuckolls. “A lot of people came to his office to think through their ideas with him. During a discussion, they would think they had come up with a convincing argument for their position, but the next morning, he would show up with a retort.” Says Wood, “Edward could be ferocious on matters of intellectual combat.”
Laboratory Director Emeritus Bruce Tarter recalls of Teller, “When one raised a question to him, he could give a 5- to 10-minute comprehensive, erudite answer that was astounding. He thought about physics all the time. Two of his defining drives in life were an insatiable intellectual curiosity and a powerful desire to understand the universe.”
Livermore physicist Mort Weiss recalls, “Teller had a wide range of interests and that made him a lot of fun. He was very open to new ideas. There was nothing small about him.” Livermore physicist Berni Alder adds, “Teller was interested in so many things. He talked to everyone. When he smelled something interesting, he got involved. He always questioned people about their current work. He liked imaginative, creative, quick-thinking people. Teller didn’t tolerate fools.”
Teller once said, “Knowledge may be dangerous. Ignorance is incomparably more dangerous.” Because he was always intensely curious in matters of science, Teller enjoyed discussing the latest scientific advances, especially in physics. “He would be interested in the fundamental aspects of a problem,” says Wood. “If he could not find the bedrock in a problem, it was just a descriptive exercise, telling what it is, not why it is. By looking into the heart of a problem, he could tell someone what fundamental things were possible.”
Teller had extremely high standards for what it meant to understand a topic, for example, particle physics. Snyderman explains, “He wrote papers with fellow giants of physics such as Enrico Fermi, Lev Landau, Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger, and George Gamow that went straight to the heart of a problem.” These renowned papers were more complete than most current published papers.
Wood recalls attending a presentation by Teller in 1959 while an undergraduate at the University of California (UC) at Los Angeles. Teller, who was the director of Livermore at the time, gave a technical seminar on the gravitational constant. His talk argued against the hypoth