What do Hungarians think of physicist and inventor of Hydrogen bomb Edward Teller? Despite his controversial legacy in creating the most destructive weapon of mankind, do Hungarians think of his legacy positive or negative?

28 comments

  2. widely regarded as one of the greatest hungarian scientist, which is funny because his whole family left the country when he was pretty young because of the numerus clausus laws, just like most of our brilliant scientists of jewish heritage. it is pretty ironic and disgusting that a bunch of right wingers in hungary are proudly boasting about how smart hungarians are and how many nobel prizes were won by hungarians, while most of them were in the same position as him.

  4. Hungary will gladly take credit for any invention made by anyone remotely related to Hungary, regardless if it’s positive or negative.

  5. Of course positive. The humanity is just too stupid, like in case of using internet.

    I think if it wasn’t him then someone else would have invented the Hydrogen bomb within some more decades as a maximum. He contributed to a bunch of other inventions too.

  9. Creating the most destructive weapon made long term peace through MAD possible. As paradoxic as it sounds we would have had many more large scale/world wars and conflicts without such wrapons. People who made these weapons turned out to do more about world peace than PR specialist like Ghandi as such.

  13. His contributions reached far beyond the “invention” of the hydrogen bomb. He was in the forefront of nuclear research in America and beyond being a brilliant scientist he advocated for peaceful use of nuclear tecnhology his whole life.
    The moment the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction was discovered, physicists immediately understood the possibility of an uncontained chain reaction (nuclear bomb). This discovery happened to overlap with the second world war, therefore, the moral imperative became the development of the nuclear bomb in America before the Germans manage to do it.
    (Interestingly enough, German physicists were not interested in developing such a bomb for the Nazi regime, but this was unknown to American scientists)

    If one day a hydrogen bomb is used in a war, Teller will be no more responsible for that than Fermi, Curie or even Newton. The technical possibilities provided by nature are universal and don’t depend on any personal achivement. The responsibility is born by whoever decides to use nature’s forces in a destructive way.

    If you are more interested in the topic, I recommend this book:
    Marx György “The voice of the Martians” or “A marslakók érkezése” in original.

  18. Imagine an alternative history where only the soviets have nuclear bombs.

    So yes, his work had an overall positive impact on the world.

  19. I went to the same high school as him, which is a Lutheran institution. Back then three later Nobel laurates went to the same school (eg.: John Neumann, Eugen Wigner, John Harsanyi). And there is a good reason for that: in the 1930s there were several laws against the jew elite, becuase the non-Jewish majority felt that jews were overrepresented in some professions. One of these laws was the numerus clausus, a racial quota (upper limit) for persons with Jewish origin in the higher and also middle education. Public elite schools were effectively closed for gifted Jewish students, and only the religious schools, and from those only the Lutheran school admitted them.

    That meant that this school had an _extraordinary_ concentration of very gifted students from very ambitious families. Also the teachers were also very good (basically they were University level research associates also teaching in high school).

    And it resulted in the fact that 3 Nobel laurates and many other famous scientists/artists started their career in that school. After finishing high school, they needed to leave the country, of course, because of the Holocaust, so they are not _really_ Hungarian Nobel laurates.

    Today it is an average/shit school, it was a bit better when I attended (still, I am not going to get the Nobel prize), but the Lutheran church has other good high schools, and it’s a church that, as far as I see (I am not Lutheran) is still practicing these values, like acceptance, non-discrimination, etc. Basically in today’s Hungary it’s hard to imagine a school of that high standards, even college level education has gotten shittier since then.

  21. A legpusztítóbb bomba a kobaltbomba. Szilárd Leo szerint (aki elméletben felvetette e bomba elméletét) néhány darab ilyen bombával ki lehetne írtani az összes élőlényt a földön. Elméletileg senki nem építette meg a kobaltbombát.

  22. I think most hungarians know him as one of that era’s famous hungarian scientist.

    I think scientifically he had a great mind, but on a human level it is really interesting to question him/ comapre him with John von Neumann (Neumann János), and Leo Szilard (Szilárd Leó). Especiall with Leo. I’m not sure they had a verbal beef, but it was pretty obvious that during/after the Manhattan project, Leo altaugh worked on it, choose and fought for a more peaceful solution (after realising the consequences of the nuclear bombs), while Teller rather pushed on and wanted the fame and glory with his scientific research.

    I think a movie about Teller and especially Leo would be pretty interesting.

    But in general I think the most famous out of them in hungary is Neumann, who is regarded as the inventor of the computers (I mean as far my experience goes in hungary).

  28. No matter what his research was used for, his scientific achievements can’t be questioned. Science isn’t only what’s politically correct or generally peaceful, science is everything that’s research. Just look at nuclear physics; it was used as a science for the creation of weapons but today laboratories like CERN use it for the good of humanity. Science cannot be looked down on, or neglected because one might think it’s dangerous, science is power to propel humanity further and Teller’s research contributed to that leap

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