Edward Teller (15 January 1908-9 September 2003) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who was known as the "father of the hydrogen bomb".
Biography[]
Edward Teller was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary in 1908 into a Jewish family, and he later became an agnostic. In 1930, he began studying at the University of Gottingen, but he emigrated to the United States in 1933 due to the Nazis' rise to power. He and Hans Bethe developed a theory of shockwave propagation, and they later worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bomb. He made a push for the first fusion-based weapons, but they were deferred until after World War II; nevertheless, he was nicknamed the "Father of the Hydrogen Bomb". He would go on to make more contributions to nuclear and molecular physics, and he was a vigorous advocate of Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. He died in 2003 at the age of 95.