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Edward Teller: The real Dr Strangelove by Peter Goodchild, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 拢25, ISBN 0297607340

DID Edward Teller inspire the main character in Stanley Kubrick鈥檚 extraordinarily successful black comedy film Dr Strangelove? Or was it Henry Kissinger, the US secretary of state, or Herman Kahn, the American nuclear strategist? Peter Goodchild, like many others, has no doubt that it was Teller.

Edward Teller, a very comprehensive and thoroughly researched biography, shows why Teller鈥檚 career was so controversial. Many regarded him as the most creative physicist of his time. To others he was a most dangerous man 鈥� in the words of Isodor Rabi, Nobel prizewinning American experimental physicist, 鈥渁 danger to all that is important鈥�.

Teller was a very highly regarded physicist in the years before the second world war, but later alienated many of his scientific friends and colleagues by his single-minded pursuit of the nuclear arms race and the hydrogen bomb. His testimony in 1954 security clearance hearings for Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director of the Manhattan project, was the final straw for many. They thought that Teller betrayed the loyal Oppenheimer in a deceitful way. Extraordinarily, Teller was totally unable to comprehend his colleagues鈥� objections.

Goodchild鈥檚 account of the Teller-Oppenheimer clash is particularly interesting 鈥� not surprisingly, given his production of the play Oppenheimer for the BBC and his subsequent excellent biography of Oppenheimer. Goodchild graphically describes the dislike Teller had for the brilliant mathematician Stanislaw Ulam, both professionally and socially, and how Teller tried to take sole credit for the Ulam-Teller H-bomb design.

Teller continued to advocate a strong defence policy for the US until the end of his life. His role in President Reagan鈥檚 Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars), a programme Goodchild calls 鈥測et another of the scandals to emerge from the Reagan era鈥�, is notorious. Whether or not Teller really believed that the system could work is an open question. But he certainly saw some of the exotic technologies he recommended, such as X-ray lasers and 鈥渂rilliant pebbles鈥�, as ways to get large funds for his Livermore Laboratory.

Edward Teller is fascinating reading and will convince many its subject was Dr Strangelove.