Recipients of Highest US Civilian Honor Include Teller

President Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 11 individuals, among them physicist Edward Teller, who was honored for his lifetime achievements. Medals were bestowed during a ceremony on 23 July at the White House.

According to the citation, Teller, who was born in 1908 in Budapest, Hungary, left Europe “to escape the rise of Nazi Germany. After arriving in America, he established himself as a premier physicist. His work on national defense projects such as the Manhattan Project and the Strategic Defense Initiative helped protect our Nation and bring about the end of the Cold War.”

“In my long life,” said Teller, “I had to face some difficult decisions and found myself often in doubt whether I acted the right way. Thus the medal is a great blessing for me.”

For the past 28 years, Teller was a consultant to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he was a director emeritus. He also was a senior research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace.

Teller died at his home in Palo Alto, California, on 9 September.