An interesting read: Edward Teller: The Real Dr. Strangelove

[NNadir]

While traveling recently I brought just one of the pile of books I've been reading - I usually have three to five books in process at the same time, not all of which I finish completely. It's this one: Edward Teller: The Real Dr. Strangelove.

Teller's name pops up in a scientific career in areas well away from his famous weapons work, for instance the Jahn-Teller effect in symmetry breaking to remove degenerate orbitals in otherwise symmetric molecules, and the "BET" (Brunauer–Emmett–Teller) theory of molecular adsorption onto a surface, which deviates from the Langmuir adsorption isotherm, the latter of which assumes adsorption is a single molecule thick, whereas BET describes systems of layers of adsorbed molecules on a surface. (Application of one or the other, both still in use, is situational.)

I'm only a little way into the book, but I'm finding the reading intriguing thus far, learning about Teller's odd childhood with an overbearing mother, being the target of bullying as well as he had accidentally amputated part of one foot in a train accident. By the 1930's, I learned of later emergence, well before the Manhattan Project, into a position of respect within scientific circles, so much so that he participated in the writing the drafts, along with Eugene Wigner, of the famous Szilard/Einstein letter that led Roosevelt to initiate the Manhattan Project. Apparently he helped drive Szilard out to Einstein's summer home on Long Island to discuss the letter.

So far the book is sympathetic to the man who hated being associated with "Dr. Strangelove" who is most famous for the development - priority and "credit" such as "credit" might be - to the development of the thermonuclear fusion based nuclear weapon known as the Ulam-Teller design. I have heard that Teller discounted Ulam's contribution, but I haven't gotten that far along in the book.

Teller was a strong proponent of nuclear power - as I am - and is said to have argued, along with Alvin Weinberg and Freeman Dyson that the so called "greenhouse effect" would be a consequence of the unrestricted use of fossil fuels. Of course, Arrhenius predicted as much in the 19th century, so it cannot be said to be original with Weinberg, Dyson (who thought global heating might be a good thing) and Teller.

It's an interesting book thus far. Who knows? I might read the whole damned thing.

[eppur_se_muova]

1. Another interesting read about a favorite project of Teller's ...

https://www.abebooks.com/9780312134167/Firecracker-Boys-ONeill-Dan-0312134169/plp?cm_sp=plped-_-1-_-isbn



Try to ignore the over-the-top publisher's blurb about plans to create explosions "mightier than the Chernobyl blast". The details of Teller's plans are, well, interesting, regardless of the flaws of the opposition; there were plenty of flaws to go around in this harebrained scheme.

Apologies if you were the one who recommended this book to me; I do lose track after awhile.


ETA: The book review you linked covers a pretty fair amount of that; Project Chariot was a part (as far as I can tell) of Project Plowshare.

[LearnedHand]

2. Richard Rhodes' Dark Sun is about Teller and the Super

Teller is a brilliant but not completely sympathetic character. His pushing for the thermonuclear bomb definitely gives off mad scientist vibes.

[NNadir]

3. I read "Making of the Atomic Bomb" a long time ago...

...but not "Dark Sun." I'll probably never get to it honestly.

I greatly respect Richard Rhodes for his nuclear power advocacy.

Looking into Teller inspired me to think about and consider Isador Rabi whose work on nuclear spin stimulated the development of NMR/MRI. The connection with Teller is that Rabi's antipathy to him was punctuated with a claim that the world would have been a better place had Teller never been born.

Rabi's defense of Oppenheimer against Strauss (who all of our antinukes love to quote as if there are any forms of energy that are "too cheap to meter" ) was accurately portrayed in the Oppenheimer movie as the remark "We have the atom bomb, what more do you want, mermaids?"

Rabi was among those who never forgave Teller for the Oppenheimer tragedy.

[LearnedHand]

4. I've not read about Rabi other than in the broader histories

I also appreciate his defense of Oppenheimer. I’m a huge stan of Rhodes. I heard him speak in the early aughts.