The Hungarian-American physicist Edward Teller (born 1908)--sometimes called the "father" or the "architect" of the hydrogen bomb--was for decades on the forefront of the nuclear question and in the 1980s was an advocate of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), also known as "Star Wars."

Born in Budapest, Hungary, on January 15, 1908, Edward Teller was the second child of Ilona Deutsch and Max Teller, a lawyer from Hungarian Monrovia. When he was twelve years old, Edward was introduced to one of his father's friends, Leopold Klug, a professor of mathematics at the University of Budapest. Klug gave Edward Teller a copy of Euler's Algebra. Later Teller wrote: "I never shall forget him [Klug]. I knew, after meeting Professor Klug, what I wanted to do when I grew up." As he recalled: "For as long as I could remember, I had wanted to do one thing: to play with ideas and...