Hydrogen Bomb                                                                         Picture taken from: www.images.google.com     Edward Teller had always wanted to make a hydrogen bomb and his chance came in 1949 when the Soviet Union tested their first atomic bomb. Concerned, President Truman wanted a hydrogen bomb built fast. In Los Alamos Teller began working on creating the first hydrogen bomb with other scientists. Teller became impatient with the progress that the other scientists were making and made rude comments that made him the black sheep of the program.     In 195o the Polish mathmatican Stanislaw Ulam was able to prove what Teller had already said, that for a hydrogen bomb to explode a small amounts of tritium would be needed.  However, even with lots of tritium there would be too much energy lost for an explosion to occur. In 1951 Teller and Ulam were able to construct the first design for a megaton-range hydrogen bomb, named the  Teller-Ulam design. However Teller did not give any credit to Ulam. In an interview with Scientific American in 1999 Teller said, "'I contributed; Ulam did not. I'm sorry I had to answer in this abrupt way. Ulam was rightly dissatisfied with an old approach. He came to me with a part of an idea which I had already worked out and had difficulty getting people to listen to. He was willing to sign a paper. When it then came to defending that paper and really putting work into it, he refused. He said, "I don't believe in it.'"  http:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Teller     Even though Teller had been one of the main designers of the project, because of his bad attitude he was not chosen as head of the development project. However, on November 1, 1952 the first hydrogen bomb, named Ivy Mike, had been made and was tested. This hydrogen bomb was based off of the Teller-Ulam design. With this successful explosion Teller became known as, "The Father of the Hydrogen Bomb." However, Edward Teller did not attend the test explosion, claiming that he did not feel welcome.     In 1958-1960 Teller became the Director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He was also on a committee that founded the Space Science Laboratories at Berkley. During this time he was also a professor in the physics department at the University of California, Berkley. By serving in all these areas Teller was able to push for continued testing of nuclear weapons, which was something that was threatened to become banned. He advocated both to Congress and also to the people of the United States on T.V.                  Picture taken from: www.images.google.com Home