Who is Dr. Edward Teller from The Demon-Haunted World and what is their importance?

Dr. Edward Teller is the Hungarian-born nuclear physicist whose early contributions to science included quantum mechanical selection rules, solid state physics and cosmology. Teller was involved with urging Albert Einstein to write a letter to President Roosevelt during World War II encouraging the development of an atomic bomb. Teller, recruited to work at the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos under physicist Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, refused to cooperate.