Edward Teller - Hans Bethe winning the Nobel Prize (59/147)

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Hungarian-American physicist, Edward Teller (1908-2003), helped to develop the atomic bomb and provided the theoretical framework for the hydrogen bomb. He remained a staunch advocate of nuclear power, calling for the development of advanced thermonuclear weapons. [Listener: John H. Nuckolls]

TRANSCRIPT: There was another activity in Washington, initiated by Gamow, which was very interesting and very useful. He introduced an annual conference, essentially for theorists, with an entirely different subject each year. In organizing those conferences, getting the invitations, getting people amused, and getting the work done I, and also my wife, participated thoroughly and with enthusiasm. I might perhaps mention only one of those conferences, where we decided to discuss the energy production in stars, on which Gamow and I did some preliminary work and so did one of my students by the name of Critchfield. Now, my great contribution at that time was that invited my friend, Hans Bethe to this conference, who would not come, not interested in the subject. Well, I called him, I think, at least three times and told him- It's very interesting and you must come. He did. He did not regret it, but rather he got the Nobel Prize for having found some of the most effective ways how energy production in the stars will occur. That is the se- famous Carbon Cycle; the carbon absorbing a proton, absorbing a proton, and so on, making beta decays and in the end, after the fourth proton got absorbed, you split up a helium nucleus and start the cycle from the beginning.