Memoirs: A Twentieth-Century Journey in Science and Politics
In his fascinating Memoirs, Edward Teller remembers his life, particularly his scientific education, his career in science, and his involvement in the American political scene of the second half of the 20th century. Teller and I shared much of the odyssey he describes: the journey through university physics in Germany in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the expulsion for being children of the “wrong” parents, the arrival in the US in the mid-1930s, and participation in the events that shaped American physics and world politics for over 40 years. We knew many of the same people, in many cases went to the same places, were actors on the same stage. Edward has captured the joys and the sorrows of this trip in beautiful detail, has brought back both the innocence with which we all began and the difficulties we faced later.
Teller was born in January 1908, a year and a half after I was born. His parents were upper middle-class Hungarian Jews. His early life was unhappy; he did not like school and had few friends. In 1926, he left Hungary to seek an education in science in Germany. He started in Karlsruhe, soon moved briefly to Munich—where I first met him—and then to Leipzig, where he found an intellectual home with Werner Heisenberg. After getting his PhD in early 1930, he had typical further experiences: He spent time in Copenhagen with Niels Bohr and in Rome with Enrico Fermi. As I know well, those were exciting times in physics and exciting places to be as a young physicist.
In 1933, that world came to an end. The Nazis came to power, and all young Jews lost their jobs in German universities. Both Teller and I were lucky enough to find employment in England and again fortunate to find more permanent positions in the United States. In 1935, I came to Cornell, where I have been ever since. Edward’s first position that same year was at George Washington University in Washington, DC, with George Gamow.
In addition to teaching, he had two primary functions. One was to filter Gamow’s daily ideas and limit further work to those that might actually be fruitful. The other was to help arrange an annual conference sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation. He and Gamow chose the topic and invited the attendees. Fortunately for me, in 1938 they chose energy production in stars as the topic and invited me. This conference gave me both the background and the impetus for my theory of stellar energy production. During those years, I was close to the Tellers, staying with them when in Washington and taking several trips together.
The discovery of fission in 1938 began a new era in both our lives. Teller had a minor role in an early event: In 1939 he drove Leo Szilard to Albert Einstein’s summer house on Long Island, where they persuaded Einstein to sign a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt warning of the possibility of nuclear weapons. This was not effective; it was not until the British made a strong presentation of the potential in 1941 that Roosevelt was convinced to act. Teller played a significant role in the development of the atomic bomb, making important theoretical suggestions. His perspective on the Manhattan Project is an important contribution to its history, particularly his analysis of the Japanese reaction of the dropping of the bomb.
The first Soviet test, in 1949, convinced Teller that the time had come to develop the “super,” the hydrogen bomb. An acrimonious battle over whether to do this raged in Washington and in scientific circles. Teller, Ernest Lawrence, and the Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy favored the super bomb. The civilian General Advisory Committee—which included Robert Oppenheimer, the wartime director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, James Conant, who had been the overall scientific leader of the Manhattan Project, Fermi, and I. I. Rabi, a long time adviser to the government and Los Alamos, firmly opposed it. With the revelation in late 1949 of Klaus Fuchs’s espionage, President Harry S Truman gave the go-ahead in January 1950.
Looking back 50 years later, it seems to me that neither side had a strong argument. The policy of both the Soviets and the US was not to fight a nuclear war but to deter one; hundreds, and later thousands, of atomic bombs would have been sufficient; it seems to me that the H-bomb was unnecessary. The strength of the bombs was not critical.
Indeed, deterrence was successful; the existence of the two arsenals prevented the escalation of the cold war into a large-scale hot war. Truman had no choice in the political atmosphere of the time. Had Russia developed the H-bomb and the US not, he and the scientific community that opposed it would have been considered traitors.
In 1954, the Atomic Energy Commission cancelled Oppenheimer’s security clearance. Ahearing was held in April-May. At that hearing, many scientists testified in favor of restoring clearance. Teller and a few other scientists testified against it. When the decision came down against Oppenheimer, not a surprise in the McCarthy era, the majority of the scientific community blamed the witnesses they knew best, particularly Edward Teller.
Teller felt exiled for the third time: He had been forced to leave Hungary, then Germany; now a large portion of the scientific community ostracized him. In addition, he soon lost three of his close scientific friends: Fermi died in 1954, John von Neumann, a fellow Hungarian, died in 1957, and Ernest Lawrence, his patron at Berkeley, died in 1958.
The second half of Teller’s life story is equally interesting. He became even more involved in atomic energy and weapons research. He became increasingly part of the political scene, an adviser to Republican politicians—particularly Nelson Rockefeller and Ronald Reagan. He pioneered and championed science education at all levels of schooling. His life and mine continued to intersect, although mostly in conflict on “scientific politics”—such issues as the development of an antimissile system, for example.
Edward Teller is a complex man who has been at the center of weapon development and of the influence of science on politics for much of the 20th century. His memoirs reflect this. I strongly recommend the book.
Hans A. Bethe is professor emeritus at Cornell University. He has had a long career of research in many branches of physics, efforts to prevent nuclear war, and promotion of energy production by nuclear power.
