Edward Teller's Influence On Human Evolution

Within the history of humanity, there have been countless human beings that have transcended state of anonymity and imprinted their presence within the collective memory. Without contention, we understand their place as historical individuals thanks to accomplishments and actions they performed in their life, such as Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of The Species. Though the understating of their accomplishments remains consistent, the figure’s persona does not. A persona is the interface of an individual and the significance that society has placed on them and whose interpretation changes with perspective and time, especially in the case of controversial. One such figure is that of the Hungarian-American Psychist Edward Teller, whose contributions
Beginning in 1941, Edward Teller first began to contextualize the idea of the hydrogen bomb after discussing the topic with Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi, who discussed the possibility of a nuclear fission explosion inducing the fusion of heavy hydrogen, during his time at Columbia University (Gale). After his stint as a member of the Manhattan project, Teller’s hydrogen bomb did not gain traction until military and political leaders advocated for it in 1950. Unlike the previous atomic bomb, which operated under a nuclear fission reaction, the hydrogen bomb operated under a nuclear fusion reaction. For this nuclear fusion reaction to occur, hydrogen isotopes such as deuterium (which contained one proton and one neutron) and tritium (one proton and two neutrons) needed to be subjected to intense heat and pressure. Once under this heat and pressure, the isotopes would begin to emit energy that is magnitudes more power than the energy gained from nuclear fission. Though Teller was able to understand the process, he did not have a method of actually igniting a hydrogen bomb. It was not until March of 1951 did he solve this issue when he developed the Teller-Ulam Design alongside Stanislaw Ulam. In
After the end of the second World War, the United States was the only country that had access to nuclear weapons. Soon, an atmosphere of fear hand begun to envelope the United States, the fear that the Soviet Union would one day acquire nuclear weapons of their own. Eventually their fears would become a reality when on August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear weapon and the monopoly of the United States had come to an end (Judging Edward teller). Skeptical of the Soviet detonation, the United States sough to investigate the possibility of such a detention. Eventually, they had indeed discovered the approximate location and time of the detonation. On September 29, President Truman argued that the United States needed to develop the hydrogen bomb on the basis that as an atheist nation, the Soviet Union would have no issues in developing the weapon (Judging, pg 190-191). Despite the reservations and protests of the General Advisory Committee (GAC) and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) of the development of the hydrogen bomb, Edward Teller extensively argued the case for the development of the hydrogen bomb to military and political leaders. Fueled by recent events such as the Korean War and the fear of the Soviet Union’s nuclear program, the United States authorized the development of the hydrogen bomb and assigned Edward Teller the