One of America's great one passes. Rest in peace, Edward Teller ...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/979295/posts?page=69#69
'Father of the H-bomb' diesExcerpt:
SAN FRANCISCO - Edward Teller, a member of the Manhattan Project that created the first atomic bomb and who later emerged as the foremost champion of the vastly more destructive hydrogen bomb, has died. He was 95.
Teller, dubbed the "father of the H-bomb" and a key advocate of the anti-missile shield known as "Star Wars," died Tuesday at his home on the Stanford University campus.
Teller was a tireless advocate of a vigorous United States defense policy during and after the Cold War, urging development of advanced weapons as way to deter war.
"The second half of the century has been incomparably more peaceful than the first, simply by putting power into the hands of those people who wanted peace," he told a forum on the 50th anniversary of the atomic bomb attacks on Japan.
Teller's staunch support for defense stemmed in part from two events that shaped his view of world affairs -- the 1919 communist revolution in his native Hungary and the rise of Nazism while he lived in Germany in the early 1930s.
Witty and personable, with a passion for playing the piano, Teller nevertheless was a persuasive Cold Warrior who influenced presidents of both parties.
In 1939, he was one of three scientists who encouraged Albert Einstein to alert President Franklin Roosevelt that the power of nuclear fission -- the splitting of an atom's nucleus -- could be tapped to create a devastating new weapon.
He would later quip that he often believed the only reason he became a part of the trio was "because I was the only one who knew how to drive and had a car to get us there."
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In Teller's autobiography "Memoirs: A Twentieth-Century Journey in Science and Politics," Teller said he was often asked whether he regretted having worked on the atomic and hydrogen bombs.
"My answer is no. I deeply regret the deaths and injuries that resulted from the atomic bombings, but my best explanation of why I do not regret working on weapons is a question: What if we hadn't?"
