Edward Teller, orig. Ede Teller, (born Jan. 15, 1908, Budapest, Hung., Austria-Hungary—died Sept. 9, 2003, Stanford, Calif.), Hungarian-born U.S. nuclear physicist. Born to a prosperous Jewish family, he earned a Ph.D. at the University of Leipzig (1930) before leaving Nazi Germany (1933) and settled in the U.S. in 1935. In 1941 he joined Enrico Fermi’s team in the effort to produce the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction, and in 1943 J. Robert Oppenheimer recruited him for the Manhattan Project. At the war’s end, Teller advocated development of a fusion bomb, and he won permission after initial government resistance. With Stanislaw Ulam he developed a workable hydrogen bomb in 1952. That same year he helped establish the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory (Livermore, Calif.), which became the chief U.S. factory for nuclear weapons. In 1954 he joined the opposition to Oppenheimer’s continued security clearance. A staunch anticommunist, he devoted much energy to his crusade to keep the U.S. ahead of the Soviet Union in nuclear arms; he opposed nuclear weapons treaties, and he was principally responsible for convincing Pres. Ronald Reagan of the need for the Strategic Defense Initiative. In 2003 Teller was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
