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.
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timeasmymeasure
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.