Enrico Fermi (29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954) was an Italian physicist and the creator of the world’s first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1. He was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on induced radioactivity by neutron bombardment and for the discovery of transuranium elements. He left Italy in 1938 to escape new Italian racial laws that affected his Jewish wife, Laura Capon. He emigrated to the United States, where he worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. In 1949, he strongly opposed the development of a hydrogen bomb on both moral and technical grounds.
About Enrico Fermi in brief
Enrico Fermi (29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954) was an Italian physicist and the creator of the world’s first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1. He was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on induced radioactivity by neutron bombardment and for the discovery of transuranium elements. He left Italy in 1938 to escape new Italian racial laws that affected his Jewish wife, Laura Capon. He emigrated to the United States, where he worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. After the war, he served under J. Robert Oppenheimer on the General Advisory Committee, which advised the Atomic Energy Commission on nuclear matters. In 1949, he strongly opposed the development of a hydrogen bomb on both moral and technical grounds. Many awards, concepts, and institutions are named after him, including the Enrici Award and the Ferm i Institute. He is also the namesake of the synthetic element fermium, making him one of 16 scientists who have elements named after them. He died in 1954, and was buried at the Cimitero della Pace in Rome, Italy. He had a son, Giulio, who died in a car crash when he was a young man. He also had a daughter, Maria, who was a teacher. He worked with his brother Giulio a year and a half before his death. He shared the same interests as his older brother, building electric motors and playing with electrical toys during his early years. He never became a devout Catholic, but was not particularly religious; he was baptised a Roman Catholic in accordance with his grandparents’ wishes, and died during an electrical operation during a wet season.
He has been called the \”architect of the nuclear age\” and the \” architect of the atomic bomb\”. He was one of very few physicists to excel in both theoretical physics and experimental physics. He filed several patents related to the use of nuclear power, all of which were taken over by the US government. He made significant contributions to statistical mechanics, quantum theory, and nuclear and particle physics. His theory described one of the four fundamental interactions in nature, and he speculated that cosmic rays arose when material was accelerated by magnetic fields in interstellar space. He led the team that designed and built Chicago Ple-1, which went critical on 2 December 1942, demonstrating the first human-created, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. He later headed the F Division, part of which worked on Edward Teller’s thermonuclear \”Super\” bomb. He used his Fermani method to estimate the bomb’s yield at the Trinity test on 16 July 1945, where his method was used to predict the yield of the bomb. His work on particle physics, especially related to pions and muons, also led to the creation of the fermi boson. His son Giulio died in an accident during an electric motors operation during his teenage years, and his daughter Maria died during a mechanical operation during her childhood.
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