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.
Teller & Sakharov
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.