Edward Teller - Bohr suggesting that uranium can be split (60/147)

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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: That was perhaps the most interesting conference, except for one event, and that happened in January 1939. I have mentioned several times that I was not an enthusiastic early riser. Well, during... at the time of one of these conferences, Gamow had invited Niels Bohr, and he came at me at one early morning, the day before the conference, with the statement: Bohr has gone crazy. He claims that the uranium nucleus splits. I was sleepy and did not respond.

Next morning, Bohr gave his paper. By that time, I had figured out what he probably would say. And the details I could not know, the general idea I could. I told you that Fermi had absorbed neutrons in almost everything. And when he got the neutrons absorbed in uranium, then he got a great number of radioactivities, I knew about that. I knew that this was supposed to lead to transuranics and I also heard, by that time, about some objections to the point that quite so many radioactivities might be found. The actual possibility of a neutron getting absorbed in a uranium, the absorption energy being sufficient to split the uranium and thereby to give new radioactivities of known elements, that was the solution. And by the time I heard it, it was hardly a surprise.