George Washington Univ: TELLER, Edward plaque at in Washington, D.C.

Edward Teller Professor of Physics 1935 to 1945
This plaque commemorates the seminal research of the renowned Dr. Edward Teller during his tenure at The George Washington University.
By agreement with GW Professor George Gamow, President Cloyd Heck Marvin invited the Hungarian-born Teller to join the Physics Dept in 1935. During the next six years, while enthusiastically teaching the new quantum theory & before taking a leave of absence for the war effort, Teller lent his wide knowledge & clear thinking to a series of pioneering works in physical chemistry, nuclear physics, & astrophysics. His subjects included absorption of molecules on surfaces, shapes of molecular bonds, radioactive decay by spin flig, sructure of newtron stars, formation of nebulae, & energy production in red giants.
Teller received the Enrico Fermi Award from Pres. John F. Kennedy & the National Medal of Science from Pres. Ronald Reagan for his outstanding contribution to molecular physics, to the understanding of the origin of stellar energy, to the theory & application of fusion reactions, to the field of nuclear safety, & for his continued leadership in science & technology.
His colleagues remember the precise, profound, & prodigious character of Professor Teller's mind.

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0001000/01388_0010005609 (added ca. 2006)

Announcement of the Atomic Age
On this campus, Jan 26, 1939, Nobel Laureate Niels Bohr reported the splitting of the uranium nucleus with a release of two hundred million electron volts of energy, thus heralding the beginning of the atomic age. This announcement took place in the Hall of Government, Room 209, at the Fifth Washington Conference on Theoretical Physics organized by GWU Professors George Gamow & Edward Teller & jointly sponsored by the Carnegie Institute & the GWU.
Although the subject of the Fifth Conference was low-temperature physics & superconductivity, the importance of such a revolutionary event could not be ignored. Bohr said that his colleagues Otto Robert Frisch & Lise Meitner in Copenhagen experimentally verified a suggestion of Otto Hahn & Fritz Strassmann. Nuclear fission by the bombardment of uranium with neutrons had been observed. From his owrk on the structure & excitation of nuclei, Bohr realized that a neutron-induced chain reaction of uranium-235 was possible. Physicist Leo Szilard at Columbia University had come to the same conclusion.
Being concerned about developments in Germany, Szilard pressed Bohr & his other physics colleagues into secrecy & helped convince Albert Einstein to write Pres Roosevelt of the danger implied & the necessity for action. Bohr & Teller joined in the war effort at Los Alamos, New Mexico, in 1943. The world was not made aware of the atomic age until 1945, when an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima & then on Nagasaki. With the power of such mass destruction also came the promise of long-lasting energy for human activity. In 1950 Bohr wrote, "...widening of the borders of our knowledge imposes an increased responsibility on individuals & nations."

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0001000/01387_0010005589 (added ca. 2006)

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0001000/01387_0010005599 (added ca. 2006)

More Info

Location: 725 21st St NW (Corcoran Hall) Washington, D.C. George Washington Univ

Nearest Metro: Foggy Bottom - GWU (George Washington University)(Orange - Blue - Silver) (click station name for all sculptures nearby) (dcMem ID #1388 )

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GWU website
Wikipedia article on Teller
GWU plaques

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George Washington Univ: TELLER, Edward plaque at in Washington, D.C.

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