1940's Science and Technology | Teller, Edward 1908-

PHYSJCIST

Father of the Hydrogen Bomb.

Edward Teller played an important role in the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bomb during World War II. After the war, when many other scientists were calling for caution in research on further nuclear weapons, Teller was an outspoken advocate for building the powerful hydrogen bomb and other thermonuclear weapons.

Early Years.

Born in Budapest, Hungary, then part of the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire, Teller was born into a middle-class Jewish family. He studied briefly at the University of Budapest (1925) before entering the Institute of Technology in Karlsruhe, Germany, in January 1926 to study chemical engineering. In 1928 he went on to the University of Munich to study physics. That summer his right foot was severed in a streetcar accident, and after several months of convalescence at home in Budapest, he enrolled at the University of...