UNTIRING CHAMPION OF TRUTH

The counter-examples are legion, but none shines brighter than that of Dr Edward Teller, one of the great scientists of our time. Now in his late sixties, after a scientific career that would almost surely have brought him a Nobel Prize if its award were less politicized, he might well recede into a well-deserved life of comfortable retirement; does he untiringly advocate nuclear power because he needs to line his pockets?

And untiring is the word: With a leading position at the U.of Calif. Lawrence Livermore Lab, an appointment at Stanford's Hoover Institution, a professorship as the Arthur Spitzer Chair of Science and Technology at Pepperdine University, he still finds time to expose the hypocrisy of those who would stifle this country's energy supply to expose it with an unmatched combination of wit and scientific expertise.

In the California Initiative, he campaigned to the very fringes of his health; wherever he went, he left the opinion polls drastically changed. And the defeat in California paved the way for the defeats in six other states, in many of which Teller helped again.

Maligned or ignored by a vicious press, he carries on the battle where it is thickest - and it is thickest in Europe now. Teller has recently returned from a European tour, and is going to Germany again in May. That will be right after the OPEC conference - only this time OPEC stands forOptions and Priorities in the Energy Crisis (Washington, DC, April 1977).

What drives a man like Teller?

Those who do not know will never understand; and those who know need not be told.