Edward Teller

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The scientists' advice was rejected, however, and Los Alamos continued to study H-bomb designs proposed by Teller. Calculations by other scientists indicated that his "Super" design was not feasible, and in 1951 one of these scientists, Stanislaw Ulam, came up with two new ideas that seemed to offer a path to success. Teller, too, produced a stunning new idea and their joint concept -- the concept of "radiation implosion" -- became the basis for the first successful American thermonuclear test on November 1, 1952.

Teller, however, did not stay at Los Alamos until the test. He was passed over for the job of directing the H-bomb project, left Los Alamos in 1951 and returned to fulltime nuclear weapons work only after a new laboratory was established at Livermore, California, especially for him, in 1952.

Teller later claimed sole credit for the discoveries that had made the H-bomb possible. And in 1954 he testified that it would be "wiser not to grant clearance" to Robert Oppenheimer. These actions earned him bitter enmity within the scientific community, and he became notorious among the wider public after the 1969 movie "Dr. Strangelove" portrayed a mad nuclear scientist, apparently based upon his character.

For the rest of his life Teller spoke out as an advocate of nuclear weapons proposals, most famously his proposal adopted in 1983 by President Ronald Reagan to develop the Strategic Defense Initiative, a nuclear weapons shield. This proposal was ridiculed by most scientists as infeasible, but work on it is funded to this day in the amount of billions of dollars per year -- long after Teller's death of a stroke in September, 2003.

― Rich Cowan