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In 1939, physicist Edward Teller (5 January, 1908–9 September, 2003) was part of the group of scientists that invented the atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Project. He was the co-founder of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where together with Ernest Lawrence, Luis Alvarez and others he invented the hydrogen bomb in 1951. He received his Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Leipzig in Germany. Although his early training was in chemical physics and spectroscopy yet he had made substantial contributions to such diverse fields as nuclear physics, plasma physics, astrophysics and statistical mechanics. It was Edward Teller who drove Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner to meet Albert Einstein, who together would write a letter to President Roosevelt urging him to pursue atomic weapons research before the Nazis did. Teller worked on the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and, later, became the Lab’s assistant director. Edward Teller published more than a dozen books on subjects ranging from energy policy to defence issues, received numerous awards for his contributions to Physics and public life, and had been awarded 23 honorary degrees.