[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 127 (Tuesday, September 16, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H8265-H8266]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    HONORING PROFESSOR EDWARD TELLER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kline). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to one of the 
great Americans of the last century, Dr. Edward Teller, who passed away 
on the 9th of September and said of his own accomplishments, ``What I 
did, I did because it was necessary, not to be remembered. The little 
contributions I made in pure science, I am proud of those, and whomever 
wants to remember that, fine.'' But Dr. Edward Teller deserves to be 
remembered, and it is important that we remember him because he perhaps 
more than anyone else in American science believed that we could 
achieve peace in the world through military strength. He did everything 
he could to rally a community of scientists, technical people, 
engineers to back up the political leadership in this country when we 
were faced with an enormous military adversary in the Soviet Union. And 
ultimately as the Soviet ambassador said when he left at the end of his 
tenure upon the collapse of the Soviet Empire, the Reagan Strategic 
Defense Initiative, which was largely Edward Teller's, hastened the 
fall of the Soviet Empire by a full half decade.
  Dr. Teller died at age 95 of a stroke at his home in Palo Alto where 
he had worked for the past 28 years as a senior Fellow at the Hoover 
Institution at Stanford, a towering source of American intellect and 
ideals, both literally and figuratively. Just a few days earlier, he 
had put in his last day of work at the Lawrence Livermore National 
Laboratory which he cofounded with his fellow University of California 
professor, Ernest Lawrence, 51 years ago this month, and where he 
labored prodigiously for the American cause ever since.
  Characteristically on his last Livermore workday, he was reviewing 
recent technical developments concerning a new source of nuclear 
energy, an area he was deeply engaged in the past 64 years and upon 
which topic he coauthored a seminal scientific paper 70 years ago that 
is still widely referenced today.
  But what makes Teller unique among all of the rest of the greats of 
our time is a vision and courage that he manifested in a most 
difficult, too-little-remembered era already a half century in our 
Nation's past when Americans and the other free people in the world 
came into serious confrontation with the empire led by the Soviet 
Union.
  In the late 1930s, Teller and many others, more than a few being 
fellow refugees from Hitler's tyranny, had answered President Franklin 
Roosevelt's call to commit their technical talents to the defense of 
freedom against the clear and present danger of fascism with historic 
consequences known to us all. A decade later in the late 1940s when the 
world's free peoples faced another grave, but less clearly perceived, 
totalitarian threat, Teller rallied and led American scientists and 
engineers in providing American political leaders with the key 
technical means for withstanding the Soviet challenge. He continued his 
exemplary leadership for the following quarter century until one of our 
greatest Presidents, Ronald Reagan, sounded the call for the conclusive 
campaign of the Cold War. Then already at an age when most are content 
to rest, Edward Teller again rallied and marshaled his professional 
colleagues from all over America to create the technical core of the 
interlock set of philosophical, political, economic, and military 
challenges that Reagan launched at the Soviet Empire, resulting in its 
unexpectedly swift, bloodless, and utter collapse.
  Mr. Speaker, Teller's technical genius and near solitary perseverance 
gave the United States crucial first access to the most fearsome 
weaponry, and the vision that he shared with Ernest Lawrence in 
founding the second laboratory concerned with nuclear weaponry that has 
endured and ensured America's weaponry excellence through its 
brilliantly conceived, supremely effective appeal to innate American 
competitiveness, and as we will do very well to remember this Teller-
Lawrence lesson regarding the surpassing importance of competition-
based technical preeminence in all crucial national security programs, 
very specifically including nuclear weaponry, for every bit as long as 
it takes to undergird America's national security.
  It was Edward Teller's Churchillian-quality vision, his simple 
eloquence, and his unwaivering moral courage, and not just once but 
twice facing down multitudes of those less committed to the effective 
defense of traditional Western values, and yes to the triumph of the 
American cause, that we should most honor and longest remember. To be 
sure, Edward Teller made mistakes, and he acknowledged and regretted 
them; but they dwindle into complete insignificance when viewed against 
his monumental accomplishments on behalf of all Americans and indeed 
all freedom-loving people everywhere.
  Mr. Speaker, I am reminded when Dr. Teller talked about going to meet 
Albert Einstein in 1939 and asking a little girl skipping rope if she 
knew where

[[Page H8266]]

Dr. Einstein lived. She said no as she was skipping the rope. He 
finally asked about the guy with the big fuzzy white hair, and she 
directed him to the correct door. He went in with two other physicists 
and together with Albert Einstein they wrote the letter to FDR that 
changed the world. Edward Teller was a great scientist. He was also a 
great American.

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