Đừng nhầm lẫn với United States diplomat Teddy B. Taylor.

**Theodore Brewster "Ted" Taylor** (1925 – 2004) la nha vật lý lý thuyết người Mỹ, ông la người đặc biệt quan tâm đến lĩnh vực năng lượng hạt nhân. Ông có trình độ học vấn cao, bao gồm bằng tiến sĩ vật lý lý thuyết cua trường Cornell University. Thành tựu nổi bật nhất của ông trong lĩnh vực thiết kế vũ khí hạt nhân là những phát triển bom hạt nhân cỡ nhỏ tại Phòng thi nghiệm Los Alamos, New Mexico. Mặc dù Taylor không được biết đến nhiều trong đại chúng, nhưng ông đã thực hiện nhiều cột môc trong phát triển vũ khí nhiệt hạch, gồm có cả việc thiết kế vũ khí nhiệt hạch cỡ nhỏ nhất, mạnh nhất, và hiệu quả nhất từng được Hoa Kỳ thử nghiệm.  Về sau này, sự nghiệp của ông tập trung vào năng lượng nguyên tử thay vì phát triển vũ khí nguyên tử, trong đó có những đóng góp của ông cho việc phát triển lò phản ứng hạt nhân trong Project Orion, và quan điểm chống sử dụng vũ khí hạt nhân.

Đầu đời
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Ted Taylor sinh ra ở Mexico City, Mexico, ngày 11 tháng Bảy năm 1925. Cha mẹ ông đều là người Mỹ. Mẹ ông là Barbara Southworth Howland Taylor, có bằng Tiến sĩ trong lĩnh vực Văn học Mexico, cấp bởi Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, và cha ông, Walter Clyde Taylor, là giám đốc của YMCA tại thành phố Mexico City. Trước khi lấy mẹ ông vào năm 1922, cha ông từng là người góa vợ với ba người con trong khi mẹ ông cũng là người góa chồng với một người con tiêng. Taylor trưởng thành trong ngôi nhà không có điện đóm tại Atlixo 13, gần Cuernavaca. Tuổi thơ của ông được nuôi dưỡng bằng sự bình yên và tín ngưỡng, nhà ông tràn ngập sách, chủ yếu là các tập bản đồ, mà ông đọc chủ yếu nhờ ánh nến. Thói quen này đã theo ông đến tận khi trưởng thành.

Taylor ban đầu tỏ ra quan tâm và hứng thú với hóa học đặc biệt là pyrotechnics. Tình yêu với Hóa học của ông còn được vun đắp bởi phòng thí nghiệm hóa học nhỏ được thành lập tại trường Đại học gần đó. Nhờ đó, ông đã có thể tiến hành những thí nghiệm đầu tiên của mình. He also often read through the 1913 New International Encyclopedia, which contained extensive chemistry, for new concoctions to make. These included sleeping drugs, small explosives, guncotton, precipitates, and many more. His mother was extremely tolerant of his experimentation but prohibited any experiments that involved nitroglycerin.

Growing up, Taylor also showed an interest in billiards. In the afternoons after school he played billiards for almost ten hours a week. He would recall this early interest as his introduction to the mechanics of collisions, relating it to his later work in particle physics. The behavior of the interacting balls on the table and their elastic collisions within the confining framework of the reflector cushions helped him to conceptualize the difficult abstractions of cross sections, neutron scattering, and fission chain reactions.

As a child, he developed a passion for music, and would quietly sit for an hour and listen to his favorite songs in the mornings before school. Later, while completing his PhD at Cornell, he noted that while his theoretical physicist peers embraced the classical music piped into their rooms, their experimentalist counterparts would uniformly shut the system off.

Taylor attended the American School in Mexico City from elementary school through high school. A gifted student, he finished the fourth through sixth grades in one year. Being an accelerated student, Taylor found himself three years younger than his friends as he entered his teens. Taylor graduated early from high school in 1941 at the age of 15. Not yet meeting the age requirements for American universities, he then attended the Exeter Academy in New Hampshire for one year, where he took Modern Physics from Elbert P. Little. This developed his interest in physics, though he displayed poor academic performance in the course: Little gave Taylor a grade D on his final winter term examination. He quickly brushed this failure off, and soon confirmed that he wanted to be a physicist. Apart from education, he also developed an interest in throwing discus at Exeter. This interest continued into his college career, as he continued to throw discus at Caltech.

He enrolled at the California Institute of Technology in 1942 and then spent his second and third years in the Navy V-12 program. This accelerated his schooling and he graduated with a bachelor's degree in physics from Caltech in 1945 at age nineteen.

After graduation, he attended the midshipman school at Throgs Neck, in the Bronx, New York, for one year to fulfill his naval active duty requirement. He was discharged in mid-1946, by which time he had been promoted to the rank of lieutenant.

He then enrolled in a graduate program in theoretical physics at the University of California at Berkeley, while also working part-time at the Berkeley Radiation laboratory, mainly on the cyclotron and a beta-ray spectrograph. After failing an oral preliminary examination on mechanics and heat, and a second prelim in modern physics in 1949, Taylor was disqualified from the graduate program.

Taylor married Caro Arnim in 1948 and had five children in the following years: Clare Hastings, Katherine Robertson, Christopher Taylor, Robert Taylor, and Jeffrey Taylor. Arnim was majoring in Greek at Scripps College, a liberal arts university in Claremont, California, and Taylor would visit her whenever he could. Both Arnim and Taylor were very shy people, and unsure of what the future held. When they first met they both believed that Taylor would end up as a college professor in a sleepy town, and that Caro would be a librarian. After 44 years of marriage the couple divorced in 1992.

Taylor died on October 28, 2004, of coronary artery disease.

Early career
------------

Prior to Taylor's work at Los Alamos, he had firmly declared himself an opponent of nuclear weapons. While at the midshipmen school, he received news of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima by the United States. He immediately wrote a letter home discussing the perils of nuclear proliferation and his fears that it would lead to the end of mankind in the event of another war. He showed some optimism, however, as he felt with proper leadership the nuclear bomb could result in the end of wars altogether. Either way, he was still very curious about the field of nuclear physics after his time as an undergraduate.

Taylor began his work in nuclear physics in 1949 when he was hired to a junior position at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the Theoretical Physics Division. He received this job after failing out of the PhD program at Berkeley; J. Carson Mark connected Taylor with a leader at Los Alamos and recommended him for a position. Taylor was unsure of the details of his new job at Los Alamos prior to his arrival. He had only been briefed that his first assignment related to investigations of Neutron Diffusion Theory, a theoretical analysis of neutron movement within a nuclear core. While at Los Alamos, Taylor's strictly anti-nuclear development beliefs changed. His theory on preventing nuclear war turned to developing bombs of unprecedented power in an attempt to make people, including governments, so afraid of the consequences of nuclear warfare that they would not dare engage in this sort of altercation. He continued in his junior position at Los Alamos until 1953, when he took a temporary leave of absence to obtain his PhD from Cornell.

Finishing his PhD in 1954, he returned to Los Alamos, and by 1956 he was famous for his work in small-bomb development. Freeman Dyson is quoted as saying, "A great part of the small-bomb development of the last five years [at Los Alamos] was directly due to Ted." Although the majority of the brilliant minds at Los Alamos were focused on developing the fusion bomb, Taylor remained hard at work on improving fission bombs. His innovations in this area of study were so important that he was eventually given the freedom to choose whatever he wanted to study. Eventually, Taylor's stance on nuclear warfare and weapon development changed, altering his career path. In 1956, Taylor left his position at Los Alamos and went to work for General Atomics. Here, he developed TRIGA, a reactor that produced isotopes used in the medical field. In 1958, Taylor began working on Project Orion, which sought to develop space travel that relied on nuclear energy as the fuel source. The proposed spacecraft would use a series of nuclear fission reactions as its propellant, thus accelerating space travel while eliminating the Earth's source of fuel for nuclear weaponry. In collaboration with Dyson, Taylor led the project development team for six years until the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was instituted. After this, they could not test their developments and the project became unviable.

Late career
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Theodore Taylor's career shifted again after project Orion. He developed an even greater fear of the potential ramifications of his entire life's work, and began taking precautionary measures to mitigate those concerns. In 1964 he served as the deputy director of the Defense Atomic Support Agency (a branch within the Department of Defense), where he managed the U.S. nuclear weapons inventory. Then, in 1966 he created a consulting firm called the International Research and Technology Corporation, located in Vienna, Austria, which sought to prevent the development of more nuclear weapons programs. Taylor also worked as a visiting professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz and Princeton University. His focus eventually turned to renewable energy, and In 1980 Taylor started a company called Nova Incorporated, which focused on nuclear energy alternatives as a means of supplementing the energy requirements of the earth. He studied energy capture from sources like cooling ice ponds and heating solar ponds, and eventually turned to energy conservation within buildings. Concerning this work in energy conservation, he founded a not-for-profit organization in Montgomery County, Maryland called Damascus Energy, which focuses on energy efficiency within the home. Theodore Taylor also served on the President of the United States' commission concerning the Three Mile Island Accident, working to mitigate the issues associated with the reactor meltdown.

Legacy
------

Theodore Taylor was involved in many important projects and made numerous contributions to nuclear development for the United States. During his time at Los Alamos, he was responsible for designing the smallest fission bomb of the era, named Davy Crockett, which weighed only 50 pounds, measured approximately 12 inches across, and could produce between 10 and 20 tons of TNT equivalent. This device was formerly known as the M28 Weapons System. The Davy Crockett itself was the M388 Atomic Round fired from the weapons system, featuring a recoilless rifle either erected and fixed on as freestanding tripod or mounted on the frame of a light utility vehicle, such as the Jeep, the former functioned similarly to other modern rocket propelled rounds (see RPG-7). It was a mounted weapons system, which means that it would be set up, aimed, and fired as a crew-served weapon. Taylor also designed fission bombs smaller than Davy Crockett, which were developed after he left Los Alamos. He designed a nuclear bomb so small that it weighed only 20 pounds, but it was never developed and tested. Taylor designed the Super Oralloy Bomb, also known as the "SOB". It still holds the record for the largest fission explosion ever tested (as the Ivy King device tested during Operation Ivy), producing over 500 kilotons of TNT equivalent. Taylor was credited with developing multiple techniques that improved the fission bomb. For example, he was largely responsible for the development of fusion boosting, which is a technique that improves the reaction yield and efficiency of a nuclear reaction. This technique was a re-invention of the implosion mechanism used in the bomb detonated at Nagasaki. He theorized a series of nuclear reactions within the implosion mechanism that, in combination, trigger the large chain reaction to detonate. This eliminated much of the energy waste and necessity for precision of the original reaction mechanism. This technique is still found in all U.S. fission nuclear weapons today. He also developed a technique that greatly reduced the size of atomic bombs. First tested in a bomb called "Scorpion", it used a reflector made of beryllium, which was drastically lighter than the materials previously used, such as tungsten carbide (WC). Taylor recognized that although a low-atomic-number element like beryllium did not "bounce" neutrons back into the fissile core as efficiently as heavy tungsten, its propensity for neutron spallation (in nuclear physics the so-called "(n,2n)" reaction) more than compensated in overall reflector performance.

After these breakthroughs, Taylor became more of an important figure at Los Alamos. He was included in high priority situations reserved for important personnel, and was even taken to The Pentagon as a consultant on strategies and the potential outcomes of a nuclear war with Russia. In total, Taylor was responsible for the development of eight bombs: the Super Oralloy Bomb, Davey Crockett, Scorpion, Hamlet, Bee, Hornet, Viper, and the Puny Plutonium bomb. The latter was the first-ever dud in the history of U.S. nuclear tests. He produced the bomb called Hamlet after receiving direct orders from military officials to pursue a project in bomb efficiency; it ended up being the most efficient fission bomb ever exploded in the kiloton range.

Apart from bombs, Taylor also explored concepts of producing large amounts of nuclear fuel in an expedited manner. His plans, known as MICE (Megaton Ice Contained Explosions), essentially sought to plant a thermonuclear weapon deep in the ice and detonate it, resulting in a giant underground pool of radioactive materials that could then be retrieved. While his idea had merit, Taylor ultimately received little support for this concept and the project never came to fruition.

Publications and other works
----------------------------

Ted Taylor was an accomplished author in the latter part of his career. He worked in cooperation with many specialists in other fields to publish his work on anti-nuclear proliferation and sustainable nuclear energy. Perhaps the greatest fear that propelled Taylor to work so fervently in these areas was the realization that the consequences of nuclear material ending up in the wrong hands could be severe.

*Nuclear Theft: Risks and Safeguards* is a book Taylor wrote in collaboration with Mason Willrich in the 1970s. According to reviews, the book predicted a future where nuclear energy was the primary energy source in the United States, and therefore needed enhanced protective measures to protect the public. In the book, Taylor and Willrich provide multiple recommendations on ways to prevent nuclear material from ending up in the wrong hands, as they anticipated that there would be multiple more sources of nuclear byproducts and therefore more opportunity for nuclear theft. This book likely was a culmination of much of Ted's work in the field, as he often toured nuclear reactor sites and provided insight on potential weak points in their security measures.

Taylor also co-authored the book *The Restoration of the Earth* with Charles C. Humpstone. According to reviews, the book focused on techniques to enhance sustainability and expanded on different sources of energy that could be used alternatively to meet the power needs of the earth. This book was also a culmination of his focus on nuclear security and the ramifications of the use of nuclear weaponry. In it he addressed the potential effects of nuclear fallout on the environment. This 1973 hardcover discussed potential sources of energy in 2000, along with the conceptualization of safer alternatives to the methods of acquiring nuclear energy that were available at the time. In fact, Taylor indirectly referenced a concept for a nuclear reactor which is inherently similar to a reactor that he patented in 1964. Taylor spent much of his time studying the risk potential of the nuclear power fuel cycle after learning about the detrimental effects that his nuclear weapons had on the environment, so he sought to explore new opportunities for safer use of nuclear power. In his writing, Taylor argued that the most dangerous and devastating events that could possibly occur during nuclear research would most likely happen at reactors that are incapable of running efficiently and maintaining a safe temperature. Taylor went on to state that the prioritization of safety in nuclear reactors is relatively low compared to how it should be, and that if one were to create a nuclear reactor with the capability of cooling down—without the initiation of a fission reaction—then efforts at harvesting nuclear energy would be more incentivized and exponentially safer.

Taylor also wrote the book *Nuclear Proliferation: Motivations, Capabilities and Strategies for Control* with Harold Feiveson and Ted Greenwood. The book explains the two most dangerous mechanisms by which nuclear proliferation could be devastating for the world, as well as how to disincentivize nuclear proliferation within destabilizing political systems.

Taylor further collaborated with George Gamow on a study called, "What the World Needs Is a Good Two-Kiloton Bomb", which investigated the concept of small nuclear artillery weapons. This paper reflected another shift in Taylor's beliefs about nuclear weapons. He had changed from his deterrent position to a position that sought to develop small yield nuclear weapons that could target specific areas and minimize collateral damage.

Taylor was not only involved in the publication of the aforementioned books, but he, along with a few of his colleagues, was also responsible for a number of patents involving nuclear physics. Taylor is credited with patenting a nuclear reactor with a prompt negative temperature coefficient and fuel element, along with a patent protecting their discovery of an efficient method of producing isotopes from thermonuclear explosions. The patent concerning the production of isotopes from thermonuclear explosions was groundbreaking because of its efficiency and cost effectiveness. It also provides a means for attaining necessary elements that otherwise are difficult to find in nature. Prior to this discovery, the cost per neutron in a nuclear reaction was relatively high. The patent concerning the prompt negative temperature coefficient was groundbreaking because it provided a markedly safer reactor even in the event of misuse. With the negative temperature coefficient, the reactor can mitigate sudden surges of reactivity propelled into the system. These patented realizations would later become vital components in the future of nuclear technology.

*The Curve of Binding Energy*, by John McPhee, is written primarily about the life of Theodore Taylor, as he and McPhee traveled together quite often—spending a great deal of time with one another. It is evident that during their time together, McPhee was very inclined to learn from Taylor. Many of Taylor's personal opinions regarding nuclear energy and safety are mentioned throughout McPhee's writing. McPhee voices one of Taylor's bigger concerns in particular—that plutonium can be devastating if left in the wrong hands. According to McPhee, Taylor suspected that if plutonium were to be acquired by someone with ill-intentions and handled improperly, the aftermath could be catastrophic—as plutonium is a rather volatile element and can be lethal for anyone within hundreds of miles. This clearly can be avoided, Taylor suggests, if nuclear reactors are protected and all sources of nuclear fuel elements are heavily guarded. The book would inspire Princeton student John Aristotle Phillips, and several other imitators, to prove Taylor's contention that "anyone" could design a plausible nuclear weapon using declassified and public information.

The Santa Claus machine and Pugwash
-----------------------------------

According to Freitas and Merkle, the only known extant source on Taylor's concept of the "Santa Claus machine" is found in Nigel Calder's *Spaceships of the Mind*. The concept would use a large mass spectrometer to separate an ion beam into atomic elements for later use in making products.

Taylor was a member of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs and attended several of its meetings during the 1980s. After his retirement he lived in Wellsville, New York.

Freeman Dyson on Taylor
-----------------------

Freeman Dyson said of Taylor, "Very few people have Ted's imagination. ... I think he is perhaps the greatest man that I ever knew well. And he is completely unknown."

Media appearances
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* *The Voyage of the Mimi: Water, Water, Everywhere* (PBS, 1984)
* *History Undercover: Code Name Project Orion* (1999)
* *To Mars by A-Bomb: The Secret History of Project Orion* (BBC, 2003)

Xem thêm
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* Alvin C. Graves
* Amory Lovins
* List of books about nuclear issues
* List of nuclear whistleblowers
* National Security Archive
* Nevada Test Site
* Nuclear disarmament
* Nuclear weapons of the United States

Tham khảo
---------

1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62  McPhee, John (1 tháng 4 năm 2011). *The Curve of Binding Energy: A Journey into the Awesome and Alarming World of Theodore B. Taylor* (bằng tiếng Anh). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. tr. 8, 113–114. ISBN 9780374708610.
2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30  Dyson, George (16 tháng 4 năm 2002). *Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship* (bằng tiếng Anh). Macmillan. ISBN 9780805059854.
3. ↑  "Taylor, Barbara Howland @ SNAC". *snaccooperative.org*. Truy cập ngày 19 tháng 4 năm 2018.
4. 1 2 3  Fox, Margalit (5 tháng 11 năm 2004). "Theodore Taylor, a Designer of A-Bombs Who Turned Against Them, Dies at 79". *The New York Times* (bằng tiếng Anh). ISSN 0362-4331. Truy cập ngày 19 tháng 4 năm 2018.
5. ↑  Holley, Joe (2 tháng 11 năm 2004). "Theodore Taylor Dies; Tried To Redirect Nuclear Power". *Washington Post*. Truy cập ngày 1 tháng 6 năm 2021.
6. ↑  "Neutron Diffusion Theory - Nuclear Power". *www.nuclear-power.net* (bằng tiếng Anh). Truy cập ngày 19 tháng 4 năm 2018.
7. 1 2 3 4 5  "Theodore Taylor Dies; Tried To Redirect Nuclear Power (washingtonpost.com)". *www.washingtonpost.com*. Truy cập ngày 19 tháng 4 năm 2018.
8. 1 2 3  Bolger, Daniel (tháng 7 năm 2014). "The Crockett's Red Glare". *Army Magazine*. **64**: 55–57 – qua EBSCOhost.
9. ↑  "Nuclear Theft: Risks and Safeguards" (bằng tiếng Anh). Truy cập ngày 19 tháng 4 năm 2018.
10. 1 2  Quester, George H. (1975). "Review of Nuclear Theft: Risks and Safeguards". *Political Science Quarterly*. **90** (1): 136–138. doi:10.2307/2148706. JSTOR 2148706.
11. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8  results, search (1973). *The restoration of the earth* (bằng tiếng Anh) (ấn bản 1). New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 9780060142315.
12. 1 2  Greenwood, T.; Feiveson, H. A.; Taylor, T. B. (1 tháng 1 năm 1977). "Nuclear proliferation: motivations, capabilities, and strategies for control" (bằng tiếng Anh). OSTI 7286490. Chú thích journal cần `|journal=` (trợ giúp)
13. 1 2 3 4  *Production of isotopes from thermonuclear explosions*, 21 tháng 4 năm 1959, truy cập ngày 19 tháng 4 năm 2018
14. 1 2 3  *Reactor with prompt negative temperature*, 31 tháng 3 năm 1964, truy cập ngày 20 tháng 4 năm 2018
15. ↑  Robert A. Freitas Jr. Ralph C. Merkle, Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines, Landes Bioscience, Georgetown, TX, 2004;
16. ↑  Calder, Nigel *Spaceships of the Mind*, Viking Press, New York, 1978.
17. ↑  McPhee, John (22 tháng 5 năm 1974). *The Curve of Binding Energy: A Journey into the Awesome and Alarming World of Theodore B. Taylor*. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. tr. 140. ISBN 0374133735. Very few people have Ted's imagination. Very few people have his courage. He was ten or twenty years ahead of the rest of us. There is something tragic about his life. He was the Columbus who never got to go and discover America. I felt that he–much more than von Braun or anyone else–was the real Columbus of our days. I think he is perhaps the greatest man I ever knew well. And he is completely unknown.
18. ↑  Fiske, Edward (7 tháng 8 năm 1984). "EDUCATION; COMBINING TV, BOOKS, COMPUTERS". *The New York Times*. Truy cập ngày 1 tháng 6 năm 2021.
19. ↑   [*nguồn tạo bởi người dùng*]
20. ↑   [*nguồn tạo bởi người dùng*]

Đọc thêm
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* Nigel Calder *Spaceships of the Mind*, Viking Press, New York, 1978. ISBN 0-670-66021-3
* Robert A. Freitas Jr. and Ralph C. Merkle. *Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines*, 2004, 3.10
* John McPhee, *The Curve of Binding Energy*, Ballantine, 1973, 1974. ISBN 0-345-28000-8. This book about proliferation is largely an account of Taylor's ideas, including his idea that it is "easy" for rogue actors to produce nuclear bombs.
* George Dyson, *Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship*, Henry Holt and Company, 2002. ISBN 0-8050-5985-7
* Mason Willrich, Ted Taylor, *Nuclear Theft: Risks and Safeguards: A Report to the Energy Policy Project of the Ford Foundation*, Ballinger, 1974, ISBN 0-88410-208-4
* Taylor, Theodore B. Humpstone, Charles C. *The Restoration of the Earth*, Harper and Row, 1973
* *Nuclear Power and Nuclear Weapons*, an anti-proliferation essay by Taylor (1996)
* Oral History interview transcript with Ted Taylor on February 13 1995, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives

Liên kết ngoài
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|  | Wikimedia Commons có thêm hình ảnh và phương tiện truyền tải về ***Ted Taylor (nhà vật lý)***. |

* Audio Interview with Ted Taylor by Richard Rhodes, Voices of the Manhattan Project
* Annotated Bibliography for Ted Taylor from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues