Edward Teller: The Real Dr. Strangelove

by Goodchild, Peter

• ISBN13: 9780674016699
• ISBN10: 0674016696
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-10-01
• Publisher: HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Summary

One Nobel Prize-winning physicist called Edward Teller, "A great man of vast imagination...[one of the] most thoughtful statesmen of science." Another called him, "A danger to all that is important...It would have been a better world without [him]." That both opinions about Teller were commonly held and equally true is one of the enduring mysteries about the man dubbed "the father of the H-bomb." In the story of Teller's life and career, told here in greater depth and detail than ever before, Peter Goodchild unravels the complex web of harsh early experiences, character flaws, and personal and professional frustrations that lay behind the paradox of "the real Dr. Strangelove." Goodchild's biography draws on interviews with more than fifty of Teller's colleagues and friends. Their voices echo through the book, expressing admiration and contempt, affection and hatred, as we observe Teller's involvement in every stage of building the atomic bomb, and his subsequent pursuit of causes that drew the world deeper into the Cold War--alienating many of his scientific colleagues even as he provided the intellectual lead for politicians, the military, and presidents as they shaped Western policy. Goodchild interviewed Teller himself at the end of his life, and what emerges from this interview, as well as from Teller's Memoirs and recently unearthed correspondence, is a clearer view of the contradictions and controversies that riddled the man's life. Most of all, though, this absorbing biography rescues Edward Teller from the caricatures that have served to describe him until now. In their place, Goodchild shows us one of the most powerful scientists of the twentieth century in all his enigmatic humanity.

Author Biography

Peter Goodchild is an award-winning television producer and the former head of both Science and Features and Drama at the BBC. His production of Oppenheimer won a British Academy Award and spawned an acclaimed biography

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
Glossary of Characters	ix
Acknowledgements	xvii
Introduction	xix
1 War, Revolution, Peace and Maths	1	(13)
2 In the Company of Gods	14	(10)
3 Twilight of a Golden Age	24	(10)
4 America the Beautiful	34	(15)
5 The Hungarian Conspiracy	49	(12)
6 Skirmishes	61	(14)
7 Maverick on the Mesa	75	(17)
8 The Little Toe of the Ghost	92	(15)
9 The Legacy of Hiroshima	107	(17)
10 Wilderness Years	124	(17)
11 The Taking of Washington	141	(16)
12 Unholy Alliances	157	(17)
13 A 'Simple, Great and Stupid' Mistake	174	(13)
14 Technically So Sweet	187	(16)
15 Mike	203	(9)
16 'Soled' to the Californians	212	(10)
17 Bravo	222	(10)
18 The Hearing	232	(19)
19 Aftermath	251	(12)
20 'Almost like Ivory Soap'	263	(10)
21 A Matter of Detection	273	(11)
22 Plowshare	284	(12)
23 Confounding Camelot	296	(13)
24 Struggling Uphill	309	(19)
25 Bringing up the Props	328	(23)
26 Excalibur	351	(25)
27 Reykjavik	376	(6)
28 Brilliant Pebbles	382	(13)
Epilogue	395	(8)
Appendix 1: The New Physics: the Path that Led to Quantum Mechanics	403	(3)
Appendix 2: Basic Information on the History of Fission	406	(2)
Appendix 3: The Sketch for the 'Super' that Evolved During the Berkeley Conference, Summer 1942	408	(2)
Notes and References	410	(34)
Select Bibliography	444	(7)
Index	451