This Tuesday saw the passing of a hero of World War II and the Cold War: Edward Teller. Known as the father of the H-bomb, Teller died at the age of 95, having lived a life full of foresight as to what was necessary to provide for the proper defense of America. Born in 1908, in Budapest, Hungary, Teller saw his native country taken over in a communist revolution in 1919; he would later have to flee the rise of the Nazis in Germany. It was in America that he found refuge. Perhaps on account of his acquaintance with evil, Teller — a mathematician and physicist — was one of three scientists in 1939 to urge Einstein to alert President Roosevelt to the potential use of nuclear fission to create a devastating new bomb, according to CNN.com. Teller went on to work on the Manhattan Project. After the devastating success of the atom bomb at the end of World War II, Teller saw the need to stay ahead of the Soviet menace, which detonated its own atomic weapon in 1949.

With the help of political allies, Teller convinced President Truman to pursue the H-bomb, and he won the creation of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory dedicated to that end in 1952 — the year the first H-bomb was tested. He served there, first as an associate director, and then as the lab’s second director from 1958 to 1960. He was not given to handwringing and doubt over his role in the nuclear age. Of the Hbomb he would say later in life, according to a Web page memorializing him from the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory: “We had a wonderful record on the hydrogen bomb. We tested it, perfected it and never used it — and that served to win the Cold War.”

In the 1980s, it was Teller who convinced President Reagan that a missile defense system was unavoidable. As CNN.com quoted him: “The danger for ballistic missiles in the hands of 18 different nations has increased, and will increase, unless we have a defense,”he said.”If we want to have stable, peaceful conditions, defense against sudden attack by rockets is more needed than ever.” Today, missile defense is in the process of being made real because of Teller’s vision. For all of these contributions, President Bush in July presented Teller the Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian award. Teller embodied the ideal of peace through strength and through intellectual courage. CNN quoted him as saying: “The second half of the century has been incomparably more peaceful than the first, simply by putting power into the hands of those people who wanted peace.”