In this talk, Professor Zuoyue Wang (Harvey Mudd College and California State Polytechnic University, Pomona) discusses the FBI's investigations of Edward Teller, the "father" of the American hydrogen bomb.  Recently released FBI files reveal the Bureau's suspicion that Teller may have been a communist.  Almost certainly the result of mistaken identity, the FBI's case on Teller, an outspokenly anti-communist Hungarian-American scientist, sheds lights on the complex relationship between American scientists andthe national security state during the Cold War, especially when compared with the experiences of Teller's political rivals, such as J. Robert Oppenheimer and the members of the President's Science Advisory Committee. This paper is co-authored by Lawrence Badash, Emeritus Professor of the History of Science at UCSB, who will be present at the talk and will lead the Q & A session.

Zuoyue Wang received his PhD in history from UCSB in 1994.  He is currently the Hixon-Riggs visiting professor in science, technology, and society at Harvey Mudd College for 2008-2009, on leave from the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, where he is a professor of history.  His research interests include modern US and Chinese science and technology policy and Asian/Chinese American scientists.  His book In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America was published by Rutgers University Press in July 2008.  Prof. Wang's next book is tentatively titled Chinese American Scientists: A Transnational History.