it's a bad week to be an evil old person
Sep. 10th, 2003 09:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sisyphusshruggedFirst Leni Riefenstahl, now this.
Edward Teller, 95, the Hungarian-born physicist who blended a persuasive personality with keen scientific creativity to become known as the father of the hydrogen bomb, died yesterday in California.
...
After the war's end, when many of his fellow physicists, for a variety of reasons, appeared to show little enthusiasm for designing and developing the next and more powerful stage in nuclear explosives, Teller worked with steadfast vigor to persuade the nation's leaders to push ahead with the hydrogen bomb.
...
In the 1980s, undaunted by the controversies that continued to swirl around him, he was credited with playing a major role in convincing the Reagan administration of the value and feasibility of developing a space-based defense against nuclear missiles. This was the Strategic Defense Initiative, whose prospects remain uncertain.
He also was a key figure in the proceedings that stripped J. Robert Oppenheimer, the leader of the team that built the A-bomb, of his security clearance.
Teller's testimony at the proceedings, in which he maintained his belief in Oppenheimer's loyalty but complained that he nevertheless distrusted Oppenheimer's behavior, polarized intellectual circles and remains a subject of debate to this day.
...
Once, after he had suffered a stroke, he was asked by a doctor trying to assess his condition if he was the famous Dr. Teller.
No, he declared, "I am the infamous Dr. Teller."
Jesse Helms has got to be nervous, is all I'm saying.
Edward Teller, 95, the Hungarian-born physicist who blended a persuasive personality with keen scientific creativity to become known as the father of the hydrogen bomb, died yesterday in California.
...
After the war's end, when many of his fellow physicists, for a variety of reasons, appeared to show little enthusiasm for designing and developing the next and more powerful stage in nuclear explosives, Teller worked with steadfast vigor to persuade the nation's leaders to push ahead with the hydrogen bomb.
...
In the 1980s, undaunted by the controversies that continued to swirl around him, he was credited with playing a major role in convincing the Reagan administration of the value and feasibility of developing a space-based defense against nuclear missiles. This was the Strategic Defense Initiative, whose prospects remain uncertain.
He also was a key figure in the proceedings that stripped J. Robert Oppenheimer, the leader of the team that built the A-bomb, of his security clearance.
Teller's testimony at the proceedings, in which he maintained his belief in Oppenheimer's loyalty but complained that he nevertheless distrusted Oppenheimer's behavior, polarized intellectual circles and remains a subject of debate to this day.
...
Once, after he had suffered a stroke, he was asked by a doctor trying to assess his condition if he was the famous Dr. Teller.
No, he declared, "I am the infamous Dr. Teller."
Jesse Helms has got to be nervous, is all I'm saying.
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no subject
Date: 2003-09-10 06:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-10 06:19 am (UTC)Bad week
Date: 2003-09-10 07:03 am (UTC)Can we accelerate this process?
Camilo (google me)
Teller & Sakharov
Date: 2003-09-10 02:07 pm (UTC)Interesting to contrast him with Sakharov. Teller backstabbed Oppenheimer, and then got Lawrence Livermore Lab as a sandbox to play in because many of the physicists at Los Alamos refused to have anything to do with him. At the twilight of his career, he was peddling third-rate engineering by second-rate physicists (in the words of a friend who worked on Star Wars).
Sakharov, by contrast, was someone who, in his role as a Soviet dissident, stood up to the Soviet State.
But Sakharov developed the atomic bomb, and H-bomb for Stalin and Khruschev.
The world would have been a more evil place if Teller's voracious ambition hadn't helped the US develop the H-bomb before the Soviets. And the world would have been a better place if Sakharov had been a less competent physicist.
It's an interesting contrast to ponder.