Edward Teller

Edward Teller
Teller in 1958 as Director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Born	(1908-01-15)January 15, 1908 Budapest, Austria-Hungary
Died	September 9, 2003(2003-09-09) (aged 95) Stanford, California, United States
Residence	United States
Nationality	Hungarian American (from March 6, 1941)
Fields	Physics (theoretical)
Institutions	George Washington University University of Göttingen Bohr Institute University College London Manhattan Project University of Chicago Florida Institute of Technology University of California, Davis University of California, Berkeley Lawrence Livermore Laboratory Hoover Institution
Alma mater	University of Karlsruhe University of Leipzig
Doctoral advisor	Werner Heisenberg
Doctoral students	Chen Ning Yang Lincoln Wolfenstein Marshall Rosenbluth Charles Critchfield
Other notable students	Jack Steinberger
Known for	Jahn–Teller effect Ashkin–Teller model Hydrogen bomb
Notable awards	1982 National Medal of Science 1980 Eringen Medal 1975 Harvey Prize 1962 Enrico Fermi Award 1958 Albert Einstein Award
Spouse	Augusta Maria Harkanyi (1934–2000 (her death))
Children	Paul Teller & Wendy Teller
Signature

Edward Teller (Hungarian: Teller Ede; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who was born in Hungary, and is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb", although he claimed he did not care for the title. He made numerous contributions to nuclear and molecular physics, spectroscopy (in particular, the Jahn–Teller and Renner–Teller effects) and surface physics. His extension of Enrico Fermi's theory of beta decay, in the form of Gamow–Teller transitions, provided an important stepping stone in its application, while the Jahn–Teller effect and the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) theory have retained their original formulation and are still mainstays in physics and chemistry. Teller also made contributions to Thomas–Fermi theory, the precursor of density functional theory, a standard modern tool in the quantum mechanical treatment of complex molecules. In 1953, along with Nicholas Metropolis, Arianna Rosenbluth, Marshall Rosenbluth, and Augusta Teller, Teller co-authored a paper which is a standard starting point for the applications of the Monte Carlo method to statistical mechanics.