Edward Teller
Edward Teller
Edward Tellerwas a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who was born in Hungary, and is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb", although he claimed he did not care for the title. He made numerous contributions to nuclear and molecular physics, spectroscopyand surface physics. His extension of Enrico Fermi's theory of beta decay, in the form of Gamow–Teller transitions, provided an important stepping stone in its application, while the Jahn–Teller effect and the Brunauer–Emmett–Tellertheory have retained their original formulation and...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth15 January 1908
CityBudapest, Hungary
CountryUnited States of America
My experience has been in a short 77 years that in the end when you fight for a desperate cause and have good reasons to fight, you usually win.
The scientist is not responsible for the laws of nature. It is his job to find out how these laws operate. It is the scientist's job to find the ways in which these laws can serve the human will. However, it is not the scientist's job to determine whether a hydrogen bomb should be constructed, whether it should be used, or how it should be used. This responsibility rests with the American people and with their chosen representatives.
If not for me, the H-bomb would have been developed in Russia first. In the U.S., we'd now be speaking Russian.
Life improves slowly and goes wrong fast, and only catastrophe is clearly visible.
I hate doubt, yet I am certain that doubt is the only way to approach anything worth believing in.
There is a time for scientists and movie stars and those who have flown the atlantic to restrain their opinions lest they be taken more seriously than they should be.
In the history of physics, there have been three great revolutions in thought that first seemed absurd yet proved to be true. The first proposed that the earth, instead of being stationary, was moving around at a great and variable speed in a universe that is much bigger than it appears to our immediate perception. That proposal, I believe, was first made by Aristarchos two millenia ago ... Remarkably enough, the name Aristarchos in Greek means best beginning.
Two paradoxes are better than one they may even suggest a solution.
Secrecy, once accepted, becomes an addiction.
Science attempts to find logic and simplicity in nature. Mathematics attempts to establish order and simplicity in human thought.
[Chemistry] laboratory work was my first challenge. ... I still carry the scars of my first discovery-that test-tubes are fragile.
Had we not pursued the hydrogen bomb, there is a very real threat that we would now all be speaking Russian. I have no regrets.
Physics without mathematics is meaningless.
The main purpose of science is simplicity and as we understand more things, everything is becoming simpler.