Edward Teller

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Edward Teller (Hungarian) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who is commonly known as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" (see the Teller-Ulam scheme), but he did not care about the name and was only one of a team that created the technology.

Teller was known for his scientific abilities, as well as his tumultuous interpersonal relationships and his temperament throughout his life. Teller was born in Hungary and immigrated to the United States in the 1930s, one of the many so-called "Martians" a group of influential Hungarian scientists immigrée.

He made numerous contributions to nuclear and molecular physics, spectroscopy (in particular the Jahn–Teller and Renner-Teller effects), and surface physics.

Enrico Fermi's theory of beta decay, represented in the form of Gamow-Teller transitions, was a major step forward in its application, though the Jahn–Teller effect and the Brunauer-Emmett–Teller theory, a common modern approach to quantum mechanical treatment of complex molecules, have retained their original formulation and remain mainstays in physics and chemistry.

Teller co-authored a paper in 1953 that is a standard starting point for statistical mechanics applications of the Monte Carlo method.

He made a serious attempt to produce the first fusion-based weapons as well, but it was not until World War II that they were delayed. He did not sign the Szilard petition, which called for the bombs to be detonated as a demonstration, but not in a city, but later decided that Szilard was correct, and that the bombs should not have been dropped on a defenseless civilian population.

Early life and work

Ede Teller was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, on January 15, 1908, into a Jewish family. Ilona (née Deutsch), a pianist, and Max Teller, an advocate, were two of his parents. He attended Fasori Lutheran University Gymnasium, then in Budapest's Lutheran Minta (Model) Gymnasium. Teller, a Jewish immigrant, became an agnostic Jew later in life. "Religion was not a topic in my family," he later wrote, "indeed, it was never discussed." My only religious instruction came after the Minta mandated that all students attend classes in their respective faiths. On the Day of Atonement, my family celebrated one holiday, the Day of Atonement, when we all fasted. On Saturdays and all Jewish holidays, my father said prayers for his parents. I absorbed God's dream was that it would be amazing if He existed: We all need Him but hadn't seen Him in many thousands of years. Teller was a late talker and learned to speak later than most children, but he became very interested in numbers and would estimate large numbers in his head for amusement.

Teller left Hungary in 1926 for Germany, partly due to Miklós Horthy's racial numerus clausus rule. In Teller, the political atmosphere and revolutions during his youth instilled in him a stubborn aversion to both Communism and Fascism.

Teller studied mathematics and chemistry at the University of Karlsruhe, where he graduated with a bachelor of science in chemical engineering from 1926 to 1928. After receiving lectures on molecular spectroscopy, Mark said it was new discoveries in physics that were dramatically altering the frontier of chemistry. He once thought that Herman Mark, a visiting professor, was responsible for his rise as a physicist. Mark was an expert in polymer chemistry, a field that is vital to understanding biochemistry, and Mark shared his knowledge about the leading quantum physics experiments achieved by Louis de Broglie, among other things. It was this knowledge that he had gained from Mark's lectures that inspired Teller to change to physics. After informing his father of his decision to transfer, his father was so worried that he travelled to visit him and consult with his professors at the university. Although a degree in chemical engineering was a safe way to a lucrative career in chemical firms, there was no such a logical route to a career in physics. He did not know the discussions his father had with his teachers, but the end was that he had received his father's permission to become a physicist.

Teller later studied physics at the University of Munich, where he worked under Arnold Sommerfeld. On July 14, 1928, as a young student in Munich, he rode a streetcar to catch a train for a hike in the nearby Alps and decided against jumping off while it was still moving. He collapsed, and the wheel severed the majority of his right foot. He walked with a permanent limp for the remainder of his life, and on occasion he wore a prosthetic foot. Since the painkillers were interfering with his thinking, he decided not to take them and instead relied on his willpower to deal with the pain, including the use of the placebo technique in which he would convince himself that he had taken painkillers while drinking only water. Werner Heisenberg said that it was the hardiness of Teller's spirit rather than stoicism that enabled him to cope so well with the tragedy.

Teller earned his PhD in physics at Heisenberg University in 1929. Teller's dissertation was one of the first successful quantum mechanical treatments of the hydrogen molecular ion. He befriended Russian physicists George Gamow and Lev Landau in 2005, who were among the first Russian physicists to befriended. Teller's lifelong friendship with George Placzek, a Czech physicist, was also vital to his scientific and philosophical growth. Placzek was the first generation of Teller's scientific career in nuclear physics to begin in Rome with Enrico Fermi in 1932. Teller moved to Göttingen, Germany's first major centers of physics, in 1933, but after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, he continued to be vulnerable for Jewish people, and he survived with the International Rescue Committee's assistance. He went to England briefly and then migrated to Copenhagen, where he worked under Niels Bohr. He married Augusta Maria "Mici" (pronounced "Mitzi") Harkanyi, the sister of a friend, in February 1934. Since Mici was a Calvinist Christian, Edward and her daughter were married in a Calvinist church. In September 1934, he returned to England.

Mici had been a student in Pittsburgh and wanted to return to the United States. Teller was accepted to the United States to become a physics professor at George Washington University, where he worked with Gamow until 1941. Teller predicted the Jahn-Teller effect, which distorts molecules in certain circumstances; it has an effect on metal chemistry, particularly the coloration of certain metallic dyes. Arthur Jahn and Teller characterized it as a piece of pure mathematical physics. Teller made a key contribution to surface physics and chemistry in collaboration with Stephen Brunauer and Paul Hugh Emmett: the so-called Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) is anotherm. On March 6, 1941, Teller and Mici became naturalized citizens of the United States.

Teller wanted to help with the war effort when World War II began. Teller developed a theory of shock-wave propagation on the advice of the well-known Caltech aerodynamicist and fellow Hungarian émigré Theodore von Kármán. Their report of the behaviour of the gas behind such a wave in later years was particularly useful to scientists who were investigating missile re-entry.

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