The Real Dr. Strangelove

"Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you keep it a secret."
-Doctor Strangelove

On this date in 1908, Edward Teller was born.

The brilliant but eccentric Teller was born in Hungary, and was born with the name Teller Ede. His family was Jewish, and growing up in the politically tempestuous Hungary of the early 20th century made him deeply distrust totalitarian government. He studied under both Enrico Fermi and Niels Bohr, and emigrated to the United States, along with his wife Mici. There he made several interesting breakthroughs, such as his prediction of Jahn-Teller distortions, and there he also began his interest in nuclear energy.

Teller joined the Manhattan Project in 1942. In an episode that speaks volumes about his level of confidence in his abilities, and hi scientific curiosity, he had a famous conversation with Fermi about the potential of the atomic bomb. They argued over whether an even more powerful blast would be possible by using atomic fission to set off a second fusion reaction. While the first atomic bomb was 3 years away, Teller had already begun imagining the Hydrogen bomb. He contributed in several ways to the development of the first atomic bomb, and always kept the H-bomb, or "Super" as he called it, in the back of his head.

He would go on to be known as the father of the H-bomb. The whole idea was largely ignored or marginalized until the Soviets tested an atomic bomb of their own. Teller's hydrogen bomb idea seemed like the obvious next step, and he was central in its design and execution.

Teller is remembered mainly for his H-bomb work, but is really a symbol of the optimism, sometimes blind, that we had towards atomic power in the 1950s and '60s. He was a leading advocate of peacetime uses for the atomic bomb, most famously recommending the use of a hydrogen bomb to create a deep-water port at Point Hope, Alaska. At some point in the early 1960s, cooler heads prevailed, but the plan, called Project Chariot, went farther than anyone likes to admit. He also pressed for the use of nuclear weapons in excavation for oil, a seemingly questionable bit of logic that also failed to see the light of day.

Teller remained a public figure well into the 1980s. In 1979, he took on what he perceived as an unfair attack on nuclear energy in the form of the film "The China Syndrome". He wrote an ad in the New York Times blasting Fonda and Ralph Nader for their rants against nuclear power, claiming that his tireless efforts against them had actually caused his heart attack. He wrote "You might say that I was the only one whose health was affected by that reactor near Harrisburg (referring to Three Mile Island). No, that would be wrong. It was not the reactor. It was Jane Fonda. Reactors are not dangerous."

Teller was a unique man, even among the eccentric brain trust that was the Manhattan Project. While many of his colleagues eventually saw the dangers of nuclear proliferation and became strong opponents of the use of nuclear weapons, he remained a stalwart supporter of them. He made enemies of Oppenheimer, Stanislaw Ulam, and Nobel laureate Isidor Rabi, among others, and his isolation made him that much easier to label a "mad scientist". But though I disagree with many of his views, to remember Edward Teller as "mad" would be grossly unfair. He was a fine physicist, a brilliant man, who believed that he was serving the cause of peace. I personally have always questioned the logic of peace through the most extreme destruction man has ever devised, but I also find it hard to imagine the terror of believing that a Nazi atomic bomb was possible, especially for an ethnic Jew from Hungary cursed with the knowledge of what such a device could do.

Jedlik and the Dynamo

On this date in 1800, Anyos Jedlik was born in Hungary.

If the name doesn't immediately ring bells, that's understandable. Jedlik is best known in engineering circles, but even there, he gets nowhere near the respect or remembrance he deserves. Jedlik is one of the Alfred Russell Wallaces, the men who made discoveries along with, or in Jedlik's case before, the people credited with them, but who for one reason or another have faded into the background of history. Wallace has enjoyed a bit of a comeback, with modern biologists granting him the credit he deserves for basically having the same idea as Darwin at about the same time. Jedlik has gotten no such surge, and it's a shame.

Anyos Jedlik was a true Renaissance man, and excelled in many areas of study. He was a priest, a physicist, an inventor, and an engineer. He should be above all else remembered as a teacher. He wrote the first textbook, and taught the first university classes, in physics in the Hungarian language. Up until that point, physics was taught in Latin, and Jedlik really did nothing less than translate an entire science into his native tongue for his countrymen. He lectured at Budapest University of Sciences for 40 years, and helped to foster a whole generation of Hungarian scientists.

Jedlik's most important invention, and the one for whom he is truly an unsung genius, is the dynamo. Though Werner von Siemens is given credit for the invention of the device, Jedlik's dynamo predates Seimens' by six years. However, by the time he got around to publishing it, Siemens had published his own and begun marketing it commercially. Soon, Seimens was a well-known name, and he would continue on to have such honors as a unit named for him. A seimen is the SI unit of conductance. There are no scales that measure in jedliks.

Jedlik's accomplishment shouldn't necessarily take anything away from Siemens. After all, having an idea isn't always the hardest part, and credit often belongs to the person with the ability to make an invention commonly applicable to people's lives, not just invent it. Just as Wallace's attention takes nothing away from Darwin, we should accept that many of history's geniuses were not alone in their discoveries, but instead were simply the ones that were most able to bring that discovery to market. And then there are Einsteins, who really do come out of nowhere with discoveries and theories that might not have been made for 50 years had he not made them, but that's a story for another day.

Tomorrow, The League of Extraordinary Scots.