PALO ALTO, Calif., Sept. 10 (UPI) -- Edward Teller, whose staunch support for the development of powerful weapons for defensive purposes earned him the unwanted title of "father of the H-bomb," died at his home near the campus of Stanford University. He was 95.
Teller died Tuesday. He had suffered a stroke a few days earlier, a release from the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory said.
"The loss of Dr. Edward Teller is a great loss for this Laboratory and for the nation," said Michael Anastasio, Livermore's director. "He was a passionate advocate for science and the development of (Livermore). He put his heart and soul into this laboratory and into ensuring the security of this nation, and his dedication never foundered."
Teller's death comes less than two months after he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. Though Teller could not attend the ceremony, he said he was touched by the gesture.
"In my long life I had to face some difficult decisions and found myself often in doubt whether I acted the right way," he said. "Thus the medal is a great blessing for me."
Teller, the Hungarian-born U.S. physicist and one of the foremost scientific minds of the 20th century, helped build the first atomic bomb and then led the development of what some have called the ultimate weapon -- the much more powerful hydrogen bomb.
He was among several Jewish giants in the world of science who were driven from Europe by anti-Semitism in the 1930s into the waiting arms of an appreciative United States. There, ironically, the group helped win World War II over the same forces that had cast them out.
At the time, Teller had been considered a wunderkind in the new and exciting field of quantum mechanics, which he called "a completely new way to look at the world and at actual deep problems which explain the stability of the atom."
Regarding the H-bomb, he said in a 1998 interview that his conscience was clear. "That power should belong to those who don't want to use it," he said, adding he thought the existence of the bomb helped deter all-out "terrible wars" through the last half of the 20th century.
Teller's leading role in developing the H-bomb was a costly one, however. Alone among the team of scientists who had hastened the end of the war with the atomic bomb, he urged proceeding to the next level, the H-bomb, and persuaded President Harry S. Truman of the "necessity" of it.
His position caused colleagues to shun him and it forced him into a confrontation with J. Robert Oppenheimer, a showdown that ultimately ended the super-sensitive science career of Oppenheimer, Teller's former chief and longtime associate. Some fellow scientists accused him of betrayal and never forgave him. But he remained steadfast in his goal.
Born Jan. 15, 1908, in Budapest, Hungary, to a well-off Jewish family, Teller's only sibling was a sister two years his elder. His lawyer father and other members of the family once thought something was wrong with him because he did not begin speaking until age 4. When he did start talking, however, he was remarkably articulate. He demonstrated early interests in mathematics and music -- his mother "played the piano beautifully" and wanted him to become a concert pianist, a career she often had wished for herself. But Teller said he found practicing the piano "much too hard ... multiplying numbers was not."
By age 14, he was immersed in Albert Einstein's relativity theory. By 17 he studied engineering at the University of Budapest.
Robert Sele, in an article for The World & I magazine, said Teller recounted having seen firsthand "the violence and hatred of civil war. I knew hunger and separation from family and friends. I learned a lot about war before I reached 12, and since then the fear of war is a reality that never leaves me."
He earned a degree in chemical engineering at the Institute of Technology in Karisruhe, Germany, then went on to Munich and Leipzig to earn a doctorate in physical chemistry in 1930. His doctoral thesis, on the hydrogen molecular ion, helped lay the foundation for a still widely accepted theory of molecular orbitals.
While a student in Munich, Teller was on his way to meet friends for a hiking outing when he fell under a moving streetcar that severed his right foot. In a few months he was walking almost normally again with an artificial foot.
Eventually, Teller became absorbed with the atom, studying in Copenhagen under famed physicist Niels Bohr and teaching at the University of Gottingen in 1931-33.
He and his bride, Augusta Harkanyi -- who was known as Mici -- emigrated to the United States in 1935 for a teaching position at George Washington University in Washington. He was impressed by the openness and informality of the United States -- "the land of imperfection," as he called it.
In 1939, he decided to devote his energies to developing nuclear weapons after hearing the Bohr report on fission of the uranium atom and the words of President Franklin D. Roosevelt calling on scientists to help defend the United States from Nazism.
The Tellers became U.S. citizens in 1941 and he joined Enrico Fermi's team at the University of Chicago. The following year, he helped Fermi to create the first "atomic pile" in a squash court under the university's Stagg Field bleachers, which resulted in the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.
He moved on to the University of California at Berkeley to work with Oppenheimer on theoretical studies on the atomic bomb and was one of the first invited to join the Manhattan Project when Oppenheimer set up secret operations at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico in 1943.
The resulting bombs, called "Fat Man" and "Little Boy," were dropped in Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, with a huge loss of life. It was tragic so many people died, Teller said, but added he thought the decision saved millions more lives -- both Allied and Japanese -- by bringing the war to a quick end.
Still, in a 1999 interview with Forbes magazine, Teller said there may have been a better way.
"I found out in detail only later that we knew of Emperor Hirohito's attempts to make peace," he said. "I think we should have dropped the bomb on Tokyo Harbor in the evening, after sundown -- at an altitude (between) 10,000 and 20,000 feet where we knew the Japanese, including the emperor, would have seen the firestorm. We could have told them what it was. No one would have been hurt. Now perhaps, if no one had been hurt, the whole thing would not have been taken seriously."
Hiroshima had a profound effect on Oppenheimer and other Manhattan Project scientists, who renounced further nuclear weapons research. But Teller continued his interest in a possible hydrogen thermonuclear-fusion bomb and when the Soviet Union exploded an atomic bomb in 1949 he became more determined than ever to ensure the United States developed a hydrogen bomb.
Going against his colleagues, Teller persuaded Truman of the need, got the go-ahead and though contending with skepticism and even hostility from his peers, he stubbornly pressed on with development of the awesome weapon. The H-bomb was tested successfully at Enewetak atoll in the Pacific on Nov. 1, 1952, yielding an explosion equivalent to 10 "megatons," or million tons of TNT.
"I worked on (the H-bomb) more than anybody else," he told Forbes magazine. "I made some essential contributions. But, I had one distinction -- I was for it when nobody else could or would be. And, quite possibly if Truman had been faced with a unanimous scientific opinion against it, he might have acted differently. And now we would all be talking in Russian."
The final break with Oppenheimer came in 1954 during government hearings to determine whether he was a security risk. "I would feel personally more secure," Teller told the inquiry board, "if public matters would rest in other hands." At the end of the hearings, Oppenheimer's security clearance was revoked and his career as a science administrator was at an end. Teller got a large share of the blame, though his testimony was by no means a decisive factor.
Teller was instrumental in setting up America's second nuclear weapons lab in 1952 at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., of which he remained director or associate director until 1975. In the early 1980s, he exerted a major influence in President Ronald Reagan's proposal for the Strategic Defense Initiative, a defensive shield to guard against nuclear attacks.
The dismantling of the Soviet Union and Congressional resistance to funding the costly and controversial proposal stalled the project, which proceeded at a minimal pace until it was resurrected by President George W. Bush.
"Even with the end of the Cold War, the world remains a place full of problems that will not be solved very easily or very quickly," Teller said, "The prospect of ballistic missiles in the hands of 20 different governments makes it mandatory that good defenses be developed." He proposed every missile firing should be announced "and unannounced missiles should be brought down."
Along with the Medal of Freedom, Teller received numerous honors, among them the Albert Einstein Award, the Enrico Fermi Award, the Harvey Prize from the Technion-Israel Institute and the National Medal of Science. He served on several major advisory boards, including the White House Science Council. His books include "Conversations On the Dark Secrets of Physics," which he published in 1991 at 83, "Better a Shield Than A Sword," "Pursuit Of Simplicity" and "Energy From Heaven And Earth."
Even in his 90s, Teller continued to work on what he called "the peculiar behavior of atoms and nuclei" and acted in various advisory capacities.
Teller is survived by his son Paul, daughter Wendy, four grandchildren and one great grandchild.
