Edward Teller ``Father of the H-Bomb'' dies at age 95

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 9/9/03 | AP

[MikalM]

Edward Teller, the man who played a key role in U.S. defense and energy policies for more than half a century and was dubbed the "Father of the H-bomb" for his enthusiastic pursuit of the powerful weapon, died Tuesday, a spokesman for Lawrence Livermore Laboratory confirmed. He was 95.

[general_re]

Well, the problem with that is that you don't know what you don't know, so to speak - we presume that we've been able to successfully trail all Soviet missile boats when they leave port, but if they sneak past you, you don't know that, by definition ;)

Anyway, that's not a fundamental advantage the way the economics of brilliant-pebble solution is. For example, one of the major problems for the Navy during the latter part of the Cold War was a decidely low-tech problem - John Walker. Namely, that SOB was giving the Soviets the "word of the day" from 1967 to 1985 - the Soviet Union was basically reading every single piece of flash traffic the Navy had for nearly twenty years. And in 1987 or so, Toshiba's generous gift of high-precision milling machines to the Soviet Navy enabled them to get a whole lot quieter with their missile boats. And with problems like that, it's pretty clear that any advantage held by the US Navy is at best temporary - you're right back to a plain old arms race under the Atlantic, unless you're prepared to take advantage of a temporary gap in abilities and nuke 'em preemptively.

[longshadow]

Anyway, that's not a fundamental advantage the way the economics of brilliant-pebble solution is.

Yes, but my point was that BP forces the adversary to switch his attack from a mode for which the was previously NO defense (ground-based missiles) to modes for which we already had SOME defense, even if it isn't perfect.

Even if our anti-sub capability was slightly porous, it would require an ENORMOUS capital investment in nuclear missile subs by an opponent if he wanted to be assured he would sneak enough missiles through to take out the US deterrent capability with his sub-launched missiles.

In the end, the ultimate testimonial to the brilliance of Brilliant Pebbles is that the Soviets didn't bother to devise a counter strategy. And, based on their own testimony, it wasn't for lack of trying. They simply realized that anything they tried to do to give themselves a successful first-strike capability would break the bank in the face of BP defense scenario. And shifting the attack mode really didn't deliver the mail, because we already have defenses, admittedly imperfect, for submarine and air-launched strategic attacks.

At this point, I pretty much forgotten what exactly that we we arguing about. I think our differences can be resolved by stipulating that BP isn't touted as a system that makes nuclear warfare impossible in all theoretical circumstances; but rather that it made successful nuclear warfare under the circumstances that existed between the Soviet Union and the United States in the waning years of the Cold War economically impractical.

Under different circumstances, with a different adversary and a different defender, BP might not seem so brilliant, but then it wasn't dreamed up in a vacuum -- Teller and his pals were working from the specific scenario of a Soviet Attack on the US, and their sole objective was to find a strategy that would make it impractical for the Soviets to prevail. In this limited sense, I think they acheived their goal.

[PatrickHenry]

Teller and his pals were working from the specific scenario of a Soviet Attack on the US, and their sole objective was to find a strategy that would make it impractical for the Soviets to prevail. In this limited sense, I think they acheived their goal.

Yet another reason why "intellectuals" couldn't stand the guy.

[general_re]

Even if our anti-sub capability was slightly porous, it would require an ENORMOUS capital investment in nuclear missile subs by an opponent if he wanted to be assured he would sneak enough missiles through to take out the US deterrent capability with his sub-launched missiles.

For every defense, there is a counter. If this nation suffers a nuclear attack, it will not be from a missile - it will be a Ryder truck with a smuggled warhead on it. And with an impenetrable missile defenses, yet essentially open borders, how long before it occurs to Ivan to simply pre-position nukes in major American cities?

...but rather that it made successful nuclear warfare under the circumstances that existed between the Soviet Union and the United States in the waning years of the Cold War economically impractical.

But that was already the case, though, under the doctrine of mutually-assured destruction - the reasoning behind MAD is indeed pretty horrible in its implications, but it's also very logical. Essentially, the only possible rationale behind SDI was to insure that the US was the only country in the world to have a viable nuclear arsenal. And not to put too fine of a point on it, but once we can fire our nukes with impunity, then what?

[Paul Ross]

I had dinner with Dr. Teller back in '92 when he was our honorary (and honored) national meeting chairman of the professional society (Health Physics) that I belonged to at the time. Listening to him discourse on various subjects, physics, politics, philosophy, current events, was a once in a lifetime experience. The depth and breadth of his knowledge was amazing.

Congratulations that you both had a chance to meet and know one of the real 'Greats' of our time. His like will not be seen again. And we shall miss him.

[Paul Ross]

2002 • No. 1	HISTORY AND CULTURE: The Father of the H-Bomb Tells His Story S. Fred Singer
S. Fred Singer on Edward Teller, "the most politically influential scientist of the 20th century."
S. Fred Singer is the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at the Hoover Institution and president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project.	I  have now read several reviews of the autobiography of Edward Teller, Memoirs: A Twentieth-Century Journey in Science and Politics. The reviewers appear to be not only negative but also mean-spirited. For example, Jeremy Bernstein in the Washington Times even belittles Teller’s many contributions to modern physics. (Perhaps he resents the fact that he never heard from Teller again after a job interview in 1952.) Born in pre–World War I Budapest in 1908, Teller not only witnessed the development of quantum theory but also the rise and fall of the Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union. He developed a great liking for modern physics and an intense dislike for communism. Now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, his life has been dominated by science and politics. In the process, he has championed what a review in Science terms as "unpopular" causes: a promoter and inventor of the hydrogen bomb, an opponent of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and, most recently, a champion of the Strategic Defense Initiative against ballistic missiles ("Star Wars"). But by labeling these causes as unpopular, the reviewer clearly betrays his own bias. Just why should an H-bomb based on the principle of nuclear fusion of hydrogen be any less popular than the nuclear fission bombs based on enriched uranium and plutonium that won the war against Japan? In fact, had Teller not pushed for the development of the H-bomb, we would have had no reply when the Soviets—benefiting from the information from British spy Klaus Fuchs, who had worked at Los Alamos—exploded the first one. Fortunately, we were able to respond to the Soviet challenge within a few months, thanks to Teller. If we had followed the path of the opponents of H-bomb development, including Los Alamos director J. Robert Oppenheimer, we would have been naked and the Cold War standoff—based as it was on rough equality of weapons capability—might have ended with a defeat for the United States. In fact, it was the U.S. plan to develop Star Wars during the Reagan administration—again promoted by Teller—that finally led the USSR to throw in the towel and thus won the Cold War. Our country owes a huge debt to Edward Teller. Instead, we find unfriendly reviewers nitpicking about how much of the credit for H-bomb technology should go to his Los Alamos coworker Stan Ulam. Frankly, I don’t care how much credit Ulam or Richard Garwin or others get for neat technical solutions. It was Teller who single-handedly pushed the nation into developing the weapon, allowing us to close the gap with the Soviets. But it was the Oppenheimer case that really split the scientific community and caused the resentment against Teller that is only now beginning to heal. In 1954, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission removed Oppenheimer’s security clearance and, effectively, ended his association with atomic weapons work. Teller’s testimony may have been crucial in the AEC decision. In any case, he got the blame. I remember those days well. Like many other young physicists, I supported Oppie. We were influenced by our disgust with Senator Joseph McCarthy’s witch-hunts and imagined that this was just another example. We didn’t know, of course, that Oppenheimer had lied to army security officials about being contacted in 1943 to spy for the Russians, a fact he admitted only much later. Teller learned of it just before giving his testimony. But Oppenheimer, who had moved to Princeton and was one of the examiners at my Ph.D. oral exam, had always been disdainful of military security despite Klaus Fuchs and other spies working at Los Alamos while he was director. Teller, by contrast, was shocked by this attitude. As the reviewer in Science relates: "Their conflict escalated, fueled in part by two wildly different personalities but also by their antipodal political views. Oppenheimer was a committed left-winger whose relatives and friends were members of the Communist Party; Teller a stalwart anticommunist." But even an unfriendly reviewer had to admit that Teller "was, quite simply, the most politically influential scientist of the 20th century." Special to the Hoover Digest. Available from the Hoover Press is The Collapse of Communism, edited by Lee Edwards. Also available is The Greening of U.S. Foreign Policy, edited by Terry L. Anderson and Henry I. Miller. To order, call 800-935-2882.
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[Paul Ross]

And in 1987 or so, Toshiba's generous gift of high- precision milling machines to the Soviet Navy enabled them to get a whole lot quieter with their missile boats.

Actually, it was 1993. Within 3 months of Clinton taking over the White House. Toshiba correctly judged that there was no longer a real Sheriff in town.

[Paul Ross]

Brilliant Pebbles, supplemented with a tertiary interceptor (letting reentry weed out the decoys) was indeed an effective approach to NMD. So much so that it was really the final shove that pushed the Soviets over. The re-deployment and expansion of our old Sprint/Spartan missile defense to cover the major axis of sea-based missile launches against the U.S. would have done the trick...and that was with 1970's era technology! And could have been done for a relatively reasonable sum.

Today, with the SM-3, and Aegis cruisers optimized for missile intercepts, and routinely deployed around the national coasts, we could also likely catch the attacking SLBMs as they were launched, in either boost phase or before they could deploy any MIRVs.

[Quix]

I HOPE HE TOLD RELATIVES his UFO stuff in his closing days of alertness.

[general_re]

Check your dates - it was May of 1987...

[Rytwyng]

95 huh? I guess working around all that nuclear stuff didn't shorten his life much

"A little radiation might be good for you" - Edward Teller.

BTW there's actually some truth to this. Low levels of above-normal-background radiation have actually been shown to lengthen the lives of experimental animals, possibly by inducing a greater production of protective enzymes in response. Also, conversely, "Preliminary studies have shown that animals raised in shielded environments with zero radiation had a higher incidence of cancer than lab animals raised in an environment with normal background radiation." (http://www-med.stanford.edu/shs/update/archives/aug98/qa.html)

[Rytwyng]

see post 131

[Rytwyng]

see post 131

[ChadGore]

Re: . . . that relies on your enemy to be a complete dummy is eventually going to fail ;)

It worked for us in Iraq . . . . rofl.

[general_re]

You can get away with it for a while, but eventually you'll get burned. ;)

[CaptRon]

Rhodes' "Making of the Atomic Bomb" is one of my favorites.

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from 2003.

[Diamond]

It's really great to see these personal accounts from FReepers. Thanks for posting that.

Cordially,

[Gorzaloon]

Rereading this thread today, after so long, reminded me of some self-effacing humor that Dr. Teller was capable of.

"I am not a very good Physical Chemist; The only reaction I am known for only involved one element".