The Teller-Ulam design is a nuclear weapon design that is used in the range of thermonuclear weapons, and which is referred to in a familiar way as "the secret of the hydrogen bomb." Its name comes from the two main contributors, the Hungarian-American physicist Edward Teller and the Polish-American mathematician Stanisław Ulam, who developed the design in 1951. The basic idea is the use of a fission atomic bomb as a trigger placed close to a quantity of fusion fuel, and the use of "radiation implosion" to compress the fusion fuel and get it on.
The production and development of this type of bombs, led to a global arms race, where the powers sought to develop weapons of mass destruction.