Jag har tidigare bloggat om en recension av Edward Tellers själviografi. Det finns en annan recension, denna gång i The London Review of Books, skriven av sociologen och vetenskapshistorikern Steven Shapin.
Shapin skriver om hur tragiskt Teller upplevde förlusten av sina gamla vänner från mellankrigstidens fysik och Manhattanprojektet sedan han pekat ut Oppenheimer som en säkerhetsrisk 1954:
and his tragedy half a century later is still not to understand why he lost them and how badly he replaced them. […] Soon not shaking Teller’s hand became the thing to do for some of his former Los Alamos colleagues. The first time it happened, Teller reacted as if he had been punched in the stomach, ultimately breaking down and crying. As he now tells the story, the true victim of the 1954 hearings was not Oppenheimer but himself:
Men om han bemöttes kyligt av sina tidigare kollegor i den akademiska fysiken och från det ursprungliga bombprojektet i Los Alamos så byggde han istället upp en ny grupp devota beundrare omkring sig, alla med rätt slags inställning till världen, en grupp kalla krigare:
And ’good fellowship’ in bomb-building was what he found emotionally rewarding, the more so when he could recruit to the well-paid cause large numbers of young physicists for whom Teller was not just a senior administrative figure but a scientific god. He loved the adulation as much as the companionship. He loved being right, and he loved even more being told he was right. As he became more isolated from the academic physics community, so he used his vast persuasive powers to nurture and expand this new community around him, one that engaged his scientific talents and approved his political goals. As he entered old age, almost all of those he called his close friends shared his right-wing Republicanism and his fear and loathing of everything connected with the Russians. If some of his old colleagues wouldn’t help build his weapons, wouldn’t talk to him, wouldn’t shake his hand, then the new technoscientific world of constructing ever more advanced nuclear weapons might make it all just bearable.
Läs mer i den intressanta artikeln på London Review of Books.