Their names are in the history of science

Edward TELLER: "Mutual trust
will lead to stability and peace"

A workshop on the issue of "Global environmental monitoring", unprecedented in the history of our scientific centre, in 1992, brought together both representatives of various fields of fundamental science and specialists that devoted themselves to the development of weapons, such as ground, air, space, in Dubna. One of the most striking pages of this meeting was the press conference of the Honorary Director of the Livermore National Laboratory Professor Edward Teller.

And the reason for today's publication was a request from representatives of the Hungarian Embassy and the Hungarian Cultural Centre in Moscow to talk about the visit of the famous Hungarian-American physicist to JINR concerning preparations for the Day of Hungarian Science.

As the Vice-President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, President of the World Laboratory branch E.P.Velikhov told our correspondent after the final press conference, the uniqueness of this meeting is that it allowed not only scientists and specialists from the CIS countries, but also representatives of military departments of the United States to find some common ground that even on their native soil were divided more than united. And everyone was united by a common noble goal - to put highly developed technologies developed in the military industry at the service of all humanity to solve global environmental problems. The participants of the meeting agreed on specific steps to develop the global environmental monitoring project.

Edward Teller was born in 1908 in Budapest. In the 1920s, he studied at the Polytechnic in Karlsruhe and graduated from the University of Leipzig in 1930. Until 1934, he worked in G?ttingen and Copenhagen, from 1934 to 1941, he was a professor at George Washington University, from 1946 to 1952 - at the University of Chicago, from 1953 to 1975 - at the University of California at Berkeley.

Anticipating questions from journalists, Professor E. Teller said: "Being here with you is truly wonderful. I believed in the big changes that happened before our eyes. But I believed that this would happen no earlier than in a hundred years. This happened in the most miraculous way... And the fact that such historical changes took place in a non-violent way is a great achievement of the Russian people. But the transition from one way of life to another is not easy and although this is not the area of research in which I am engaged, I note that dictatorship is a few mistakes, but huge ones and democracy is a lot of mistakes, but small ones. Lessons can be learned from small mistakes. It's not easy, but you have to learn it. We, scientists, techies, just like other people, also make mistakes, hopefully small ones. One of the greatest scientists of our century Niels Bohr once said that a specialist is one that from his bad experiences draws a warning to others so that they do not repeat the same mistakes. Let's not be afraid of mistakes, but try to make sure they are small mistakes..."

Questions to the American scientist were asked by correspondents of the weekly "Salvation", "Nezavisimaya Gazeta", Radio Russia, the programme of Russian television "Vesti", "Voice of America", the Associated Press Agency, the Chinese daily "Science and Technology" and the BBC, the weekly "Dubna" and other media. We think readers of the weekly will be interested in reading Professor Teller's answers to some of these questions.

What was the purpose of including components of the SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative that was on many minds at the time) programme in the global environmental monitoring project? When this programme was developed, there was an image of the enemy. Today, that there is an agreement between the United States and Russia, isn't this balloon one of the arguments in favor of the further development of SDI?

- I will answer completely frankly. The SDI system was proposed almost ten years ago, on 23 March, 1983. I was present at the White House when President Reagan announced this. I didn't even know why I was invited to the White House and everything became clear just before the meeting. I want to tell you that SDI was never intended against the enemy. That's what they wrote, I know, but I don't understand why. The first thing Reagan did was asking a question to everyone present. I hope I quote him accurately enough: "Isn't it better to save human lives than to avenge them?" And he explained his thought - we tried to avoid a nuclear war, showing readiness to strike in retaliation. Instead, he proposed developing a system not just to protect Americans, but everyone, including potential adversaries. The message was clear and strong, but those who opposed funding for this programme considered it fantastic.

We worked and came quite close to certain results, when the fantasy started to take on real contours. The programme relied on early recognition of an incoming missile to "hit the bullet with the bullet." Why this way? I was born in Hungary. There is such worldly wisdom there. What's the best way to catch a bird? It's very simple - to salt its tail. But if you were able to salt the bird's tail, then catching it won't cost you anything. So, having solved the most difficult problem of hitting a missile with a missile, creating a strong technological potential for this, it costs us nothing to use it to solve environmental problems.

My answer is: I believe in the power of technology. With its help, you can do much more than you dreamed of. Both the detection of pollutants in the atmosphere and the fight against hurricanes - these tasks are close together. As for military equipment, before the Second World War, aircraft were predominantly military and soon after its end, they became quite common peaceful transport for everyone. This transformation of military instruments into peaceful ones still happens. And in relation to SDI, we can say that the first words at its inception concerned saving lives and then they talked about peaceful cooperation. SDI was not intended to influence the enemy. And its transformation into peaceful means, required for prevention of environmental pollution and struggle with elements is quite appropriate and natural.

How do you imagine the problems of eliminating nuclear weapons? Or radioactive waste disposal?

- This is a very difficult question and I am ready to give an answer that is different from what is often said. What to do with radioactive waste? Answer: there is no radioactive waste, there are radioactive by-products. What to do? To use them. And they are already used, for example, in medicine. I had problems with my heart and I received a dose of technetium that far exceeded the maximum allowable. It helped to clarify my condition. Radioactive waste, or more precisely, products, can be used to improve food safety and for various applications in biology. When you don't throw it away, like carefree owners throw away things, but organize serious radiation safety, you act quite wisely. Yes, and in the States, difficulties began to occur with atomic energy, but not a single person employed in this industry has yet received serious injuries.

When it comes to atomic weapons, one of our most important goals is to avoid war. They tell me that all my life I have worked for weapons. This is not true, I started out as a theoretical physicist and was not interested in anything else than knowledge. Later, came the danger of Hitler and with it - the discoveries of many famous scientists whom I knew, Fermi, for example, I did not know Hahn and Strassmann that talked about the possibility of designing nuclear weapons. Later, I came to the conviction that ignorance does not solve any of the problems. Therefore, I worked to solve the atomic problem both during the war and after it. After the war, however, I didn't want to do it and no one wanted to. But there was awareness that the stop was wrong and the work went on.

It is my deep conviction that the great task of achieving peace and stability will not be solved with the destruction of weapons; the path to it lies only through cooperation. If we take and destroy all types of weapons, any dictator that designs his weapons in secrecy will be able to acquire unlimited power. And we need to decide how to use our knowledge in the name of these larger goals. And this was one of the important points in the agreement signed by Bush and Yeltsin.

Isn't the global environmental monitoring project a kind of assistance to each other between the two military-industrial complexes - the CIS and the USA?

- The answer is very simple: no. This project is primarily intended to gain knowledge. The number of people on earth rapidly increases, a process predicted by the British Malthus almost two hundred years ago. He said that diseases and wars that take human lives are natural regulators. When the number of people on earth increases, famine occurs. In the time of Malthus, there were about a billion people on earth; today, there are almost six billion of us. Our knowledge and advanced technology solved a problem that seemed insoluble to the British scientist. But the problem has not been completely eliminated: the increase in humanity can result in the depletion of resources on earth and the side effects of human activity are completely unpredictable. Many people are afraid of this and quite rightly so. However, we still have not figured out whether acid rain, ozone holes and other changes are dangerous to human life, or this may not be the case... There are many ways to avoid big mistakes. It was on this path that we joined forces. A "by-product" of our activities may be something that will be useful for the industry of Russia, the USA and any other country.

How would you estimate the role of the intelligence that Soviet scientists received during the production of the atomic bomb? American intelligence puts itself three heads above Soviet intelligence. What role did the intelligence data that came across your desk play?

- I'm afraid I didn't fully understand your question. But I will try to answer to the best of my understanding. When designing the atomic and hydrogen bombs, no intelligence data came to our table at all. The intelligence contribution was zero. Intelligence is intelligence. It also gave us misinformation, saying that the Russians did not have a bomb. When I arrived in Moscow, I found out something that I had only guessed about before. Evgeny Pavlovich Velikhov led us to Kurchatov's house. We had no idea about the gigantic work that Kurchatov and his associates had carried out. Most people in the United States were terribly surprised by the Soviet Union's rapid progress in this area. I underestimated this less than many Americans and was less surprised.

In our work on scientific and technical issues, people from intelligence did not help in any way.

You said: we must have weapons to save the world from dictatorship. In what part of the world do you think we can expect a new dictatorship?

- Technology has made the world quite compact, but nevertheless, it is quite large. As a scientist and a person that has lived the most important part of his life in many countries, I have always been interested in the difficulties and their underestimation that can result in this danger. If we cooperate and openly exchange information, I believe that the question of where a dictatorship may occur is unlikely to result in serious consequences. It's difficult to predict today. And the question of where the dictator will be more dangerous is easier to answer. Evidence is the recent history of Hussein's regime and the role of the United Nations in preventing global conflict. I don't know where the new danger will come from. But I know that openness is the key to peace in the world. I don't know whether there is openness - glasnost (Professor Teller pronounced this international word in Russian), but I know that glasnost is your great achievement.

Nowadays, a lot is said and written about the "brain drain" from Russia and it causes great concern in the West. Do you think there is any reason for concern and is this such a big problem for Russia? (question from the weekly "Dubna").

- I'll suggest what not to do. Don't stop people from going abroad. Encourage them to come back. When, after fifty years of absence, I visited my homeland, Hungary, a good man told me about the same thing. I would like to organize invitations for Hungarian scientists so that in a year or two, they will return to their homeland. Temporary positions in the West are much easier to find than permanent positions. I know from personal experience that leaving your home country is very difficult. I did not have the opportunity to return to Hungary for a very long time. If such an opportunity had existed before, I would have returned.

I think it would be a great shame if such a strong scientifically and technically based institution as your institute in Dubna were to suffer serious damage due to the departure of many leading scientists. And at the same time, today, doing good work abroad is one of the ways to cope with your problems. And the topics that we discuss at this meeting give scientists the opportunity to work in the best conditions abroad.

Unfortunately, there is no good answer to this question today. Therefore, I will limit myself to what has been said, recognizing that I cannot give a complete answer.

What recent scientific discoveries do you consider most dangerous today as a Manhattan Project participant?

- There is only one danger for people - other people. There is only one hope for people - other people. If I could answer the question of how to avoid danger and to maintain hope, it would mean that I know everything in the world. I want to say a very simple thing. Man is sometimes called a problem-solving animal. In the States, they say that men and women are animals that create problems and there is no limit to the problems they can create. Perhaps, the greatest dangers in human history have been the pursuit and possession of great power. And hopes were pinned on limiting this power. I cannot answer this question, since it is related to the inner world of a person. And his ingenuity can be directed both for evil and for good...

The answers were written down by Evgeny MOLCHANOV.
Translated from English by Mikhail POTAPOV
Photo by Yury TUMANOV