Edward Teller - US Government Work and Political Advocacy

US Government Work and Political Advocacy

After the Oppenheimer controversy, Teller became ostracized by much of the scientific community, but was still quite welcome in the government and military science circles. Along with his traditional advocacy for nuclear energy development, a strong nuclear arsenal, and a vigorous nuclear testing program, he had helped to develop nuclear reactor safety standards as the chair of the Reactor Safeguard Committee of the AEC in the late 1940s, and later headed an effort at General Atomics which designed research reactors in which a nuclear meltdown would be impossible (the TRIGA).

Teller promoted increased defense spending to counter the perceived Soviet missile threat. He was a signatory to the 1958 report by the military sub-panel of the Rockefeller Brothers funded Special Studies Project, which called for a $3 billion annual increase in America's military budget.

He was Director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (1958–1960), which he helped to found (along with Ernest O. Lawrence), and after that he continued as an Associate Director. He chaired the committee that founded the Space Sciences Laboratory at Berkeley. He also served concurrently as a Professor of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He was a tireless advocate of a strong nuclear program and argued for continued testing and development—in fact, he stepped down from the directorship of Livermore so that he could better lobby against the proposed test ban. He testified against the test ban both before Congress as well as on television.

Teller established the Department of Applied Science at the University of California, Davis and LLNL in 1963, which holds the Edward Teller endowed professorship in his honor. In 1975 he retired from both the lab and Berkeley, and was named Director Emeritus of the Livermore Laboratory and appointed Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution. In 1983, he spoke at The Thomas Jefferson School, a conference of intellectuals discussing Objectivism organized by economist Professor George Reisman, where he received a standing ovation. After the fall of communism in Hungary in 1989, he made several visits to his country of origin, and paid careful attention to the political changes there.