Enrico Fermi

Thank you, my friend SGT (Join to see) for making us aware that on November 28, 1954 Italian-American nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi died of stomach cancer at the age of 53.

The World Of Enrico Fermi (1970)
"A documentary which portrays the life and work of the nearly contemporary physicist, Enrico Fermi, whose work helped to transform not only physics and the style of doing research, but even the course of history itself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3SKBwzTtv0

Images:
1. Enrico Fermi sits with his wife, Laura, an author and historian, in 1954.
2. 'Corbino’s Boys,' Professor of Theoretical Physics Enrico Fermi and his colleagues Franco Dino Rasetti and Emelio Segre made major contributions to the world of physics
3. Enrico Fermi 1938 Nobel Prize Certificate
4. Italian-born physicist Enrico Fermi explaining a problem in physics, c. 1950.

Biographies
1. guides.lib.uchicago.edu/c.php?g=298140&p=1988920
2. atomicheritage.org/article/manhattan-project-spotlight-enrico-fermi

1. Background from guides.lib.uchicago.edu/c.php?g=298140&p=1988920
"Enrico Fermi (1901-1954), Charles H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago, and 1938 Nobel Prize winner in physics, is best known to the general public for his leadership of the Manhattan Project team, which succeeded in obtaining the first controlled self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. This experiment, which was carried out at the University of Chicago on December 2, 1942, made possible the development of the atomic bomb. Fermi was also among those who developed the bomb, at Los Alamos, New Mexico, to operational level. Even after his acceptance of a professorship of physics at the University of Chicago at the close of the war, he continued to work in an advisory capacity for the Atomic Energy Commission, the Office of Naval Research, and related bodies.

Fermi was born in Rome, Italy, on September 29, 1901, the third child of Alberto and Ida (de Gattis) Fermi. Alberto was employed by the Italian railroads as an administrator; Ida had been a school teacher prior to her marriage. While still a teenager, Fermi developed a strong interest in mathematics, which, under the guidance of Adolfo Amidei, an engineer colleague of Alberto's, developed into an interest in physics too. Also during his adolescence, Fermi, along with his close friend and future physicist Enrico Persico, spent many of his days designing and conducting scientific experiments, including one to determine the precise density of Rome's drinking water. According to Amidei and to the evidence of an early research notebook in this collection, Fermi was a prodigy as a theoretical physicist. In November 1918, just after he turned seventeen, Fermi began his higher education at the Scuola Normale Superiore at Pisa on a scholarship. Less than four years later he received the degree of Doctor of Physics, magna cum laude, from the University of Pisa, based on experimental work that he had conducted on X-rays.

Following his studies in Pisa, Fermi used a fellowship from the Italian Ministry of Public Instruction to study at Göttingen, a university then at the height of its fame in physics. He worked there with Professor Max Born and was a fellow student of Werner Heisenberg, who was to make some of his most important contributions to the field of theoretical physics within the next two years. During the subsequent academic year, Fermi taught at the University of Rome and then, in 1924, at Leyden in Holland, where he worked with Professor Ehrenfest and his pupils, who included Sam Goudsmit. During the next two academic years, Fermi held an appointment at the University of Florence, where he began work on what would later come to be known as the "Fermi-Dirac statistics." The Fermi-Dirac statistics enabled not only a deeper understanding of the conduction of electricity in metals, but also the development of a widely used statistical atom model.

Fermi was appointed Professor of Physics at the University of Rome in 1926, where he lectured until 1938. From 1926 to 1932, he joined other European physicists in working primarily on the theory of atomic structure, which Fermi helped to complete in the form that it is known today. By 1932 his attention shifted to the growing fields of theoretical and experimental nuclear physics. Soon thereafter, he developed his theory of b-ray emission, in which he gave mathematical evidence for the existence of the neutrino. This proved to be one of his major achievements in physics. Working with several collaborators at the University of Rome, including Edoardo Amaldi and Bruno Pontecorvo, Fermi then went on to study the slowing down of the neutron, another recently discovered atomic particle, in hydrogenous materials. By capturing the slow neutron in atomic nuclei, he made a comprehensive study of a big class of artificially radioactive substances. His work on neutron physics was recognized in 1938 when he received the Nobel Prize for Physics. The techniques and theories that he worked out during this period were also those that he later used in the "exponential pile" experiments which led to the development of the first controlled uranium-graphite reactor.

During this remarkably productive period scientifically, Fermi was finding the political situation in Italy increasingly intolerable. In 1928 he had married Laura Capon, the daughter of a respected Jewish family in Rome. While Fermi, like many of his colleagues in this period, was a member of the Fascist Party for reasons of professional necessity, Italy's enactment of anti-Semitic racial laws in 1938 caused him to consider emigration as a protection for his family. That family now included two children, Nella and Giulio. Recognizing the occasion of his family's travel to Stockholm for the Nobel awards ceremony in 1938 as an opportunity for escape, Fermi and his family departed for the United States from the ceremony. Shortly thereafter he was appointed to a professorship of physics at Columbia University.

Soon after his arrival in the United States, Fermi became instrumental in sparking the U. S. government's interest in developing atomic energy for military purposes. Working with other physicists at the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago, which had been established for precisely this reason, he led a team to design and construct an exponential pile (sometimes referred to as Chicago Pile 1) in an empty room (formerly a squash court) under one of the university's athletics fields. The first-ever controlled self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction took place in that pile on December 2, 1942. During the subsequent two years, Fermi conducted various experiments using the reactor, as well as assisted in the development of a larger reactor at the nearby Argonne Laboratory. On July 11, 1944, Enrico and Laura Fermi were naturalized as citizens of the United States.

Following a brief period during which he worked primarily with the DuPont Company developing plutonium on an industrial scale, Fermi moved his family in August 1944 to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the War Department's top-secret Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb was already well underway. As Associate Director of the project, he oversaw all experimental physics projects already in progress, conducted a few experiments on neutron cross section measurements, and observed the first test of the bomb at Alamogordo, New Mexico. Fermi then served as one of four scientific consultants to President Truman's advisory Interim Committee, which, after lengthy deliberation, recommended that the bomb be used for military purposes. Fermi received many citations and awards for his contributions to the war effort, including the Congressional Medal for Merit in 1946.

Resuming his academic work in 1946 at the University of Chicago as the Charles H. Swift Distinguished Professor of Physics, Fermi became a member of the newly formed Institute for Nuclear Studies at the university (the present Enrico Fermi Institute for Nuclear Studies). During the subsequent eight years of professional activity, he assisted in the development of Chicago's 450 Mev synchrocyclotron and of several electronic calculating machines. He worked in an advisory capacity to the Atomic Energy Commission and its associated laboratories, served as the President of the American Physical Society in the early 1950s, delivered many lectures, taught several university courses, and published numerous papers on various theoretical and experimental topics in physics. These papers included studies of neutron diffraction by crystals, of analogies between the properties of neutrons and optical waves, of the physics of mesons, of the origin of cosmic rays, and, in the last year of his life, of the polarization of proton beams on scattering.

Fermi spent the summer of 1954 in France, Germany, and Italy where he toured, delivered lectures, and reunited with various European friends, relatives, and colleagues. He was already in the final stages of an incurable cancer. Returning to Chicago in September 1954, he spent the last two months of his life visiting with friends and family and undergoing various medical procedures. Just days before he died, the Atomic Energy Commission created a special award for Fermi in recognition of his distinguished service to the nation as a scientist.

Enrico Fermi died in his sleep at his Chicago home on November 29, 1954.'

2. Background from atomicheritage.org/article/manhattan-project-spotlight-enrico-fermi
"Manhattan Project Spotlight: Enrico Fermi
The person that really impresses me most among all the people that I met there was Fermi. He was really an extraordinary man. He happened to be a physicist, but I think he could have gone into any profession, whether by accident or by design, and done extraordinarily well at it. – Crawford Greenewalt

Of all the scientific luminaries who worked on the Manhattan Project, Enrico Fermi was among the most distinguished. He was present at many of the pivotal moments in building the atomic bomb, including the first fission experiment in the United States; the Chicago Pile-1, X-10 Graphite Reactor, and B Reactor going critical; and the Trinity test. A gifted teacher and a master of both theoretical and experimental physics, he was nicknamed “the Pope.”

Recently, collector Ronald K. Smeltzer provided the Atomic Heritage Foundation with a copy of “To Fermi with Love,” a program produced by Argonne National Laboratory in 1971 to give to friends of Fermi and to libraries. You can now listen to the full program – Parts One, Two, Three, and Four – on our Voices of the Manhattan Project website.

The program contains recollections from some of Enrico Fermi’s closest friends and colleagues, as well as remarkable recordings of Fermi himself. In “To Fermi with Love,” we gain not only a fuller appreciation of Fermi’s scientific contributions, but also an understanding of his distinctive traits: honesty, simplicity, and a relentless work ethic.
Early Life
Franco Rasetti, Enrico Fermi, and Emilio Segre in academic dressFermi was born on September 29, 1901 in Rome, Italy. As a boy, a family friend noticed and encouraged his interest in math and science. Fermi proved a brilliant student, winning a scholarship to the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa. In 1922, he received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Pisa.

Fermi endured several personal tragedies, including the death of his older brother in 1915 and the deaths of his mother and father while still in his twenties. While mourning his mother’s death in 1924, Fermi met Laura Capon, the daughter of an admiral in the Italian Navy. Four years later, he and Laura would marry.

In 1927, Fermi was appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Rome. With a group of other young physicists called “Corbino’s Boys,” Fermi and his colleagues made major contributions to the world of physics. In 1926, he discovered the statistical laws (known as Fermi-Dirac statistics) that govern particles subject to Pauli’s exclusion principle.

1934 was a prodigious year for Fermi and his group. They demonstrated that nuclear transformation occurs in almost every element that is bombarded by neutrons, and in May split uranium but did not realize it. In October, Fermi discovered slow neutrons, which in turn contributed to the discovery of nuclear fission. For these breakthroughs, Fermi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938.

As Mussolini aligned Italy closer to Nazi Germany, the Fermis’ position became untenable – especially for Laura, who was Jewish. In 1938, Italy enacted the anti-Semitic Racial Laws. “This made an intolerable situation,” Emilio Segrè remembered. “He [Enrico] decided that there was nothing he could do anymore and he had to quit.” The Fermis decided to leave for the United States.

The Manhattan Project
In January of 1939, after accepting his Nobel Prize, Fermi arrived in New York. He accepted an appointment as Professor of Physics at Columbia University. Excited by the discovery of fission, he participated in the first fission experiment in the U.S. within a few weeks of his arrival. “Enrico picked the work up when he heard about the discovery of fission, because fission explained what he had done in Rome and what they had not understood was going on,” Laura explained.

Supported by funding from the U.S. government’s Uranium Committee and its successor, the National Defense Research Committee, Fermi continued to research nuclear chain reactions. Working alongside members of the Columbia University football team, who he recruited to help build chain reacting piles of graphite and uranium, Fermi demonstrated tireless energy.

As the U.S. entered World War II, uranium research took on new urgency. In 1942, Fermi moved to Chicago to work at the University of Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory. Fermi studied the fundamentals of pile operation, building a small experimental unit – the Chicago Pile-1.

On December 2, 1942, CP-1 went critical. It was the world’s first self-sustained, controlled nuclear reaction. Arthur Compton described Fermi’s expression: “There was Fermi’s face—one saw in him no sign of elation. The experiment had worked just as he had expected, and that was that. Cool and collected—Fermi’s face was that of a competent man of action busily engaged on the one important job.”

After the success in Chicago, J. Robert Oppenheimer formally recruited Fermi into the Manhattan Project. In 1944, Fermi became associate director of the laboratory at Los Alamos. At Hanford, he inserted the first uranium fuel slug into the B Reactor. Working with John Wheeler, Fermi helped determine that xenon poisoning was responsible for the mysterious shutdown of the reactor.

After the conclusion of the war, Fermi returned to the University of Chicago, where he became a professor at the Institute for Nuclear Studies. His postwar research focused on pion-nucleon interaction. He also served on the Atomic Energy Commission General Advisory Committee. Fermi died of stomach cancer on November 28, 1954, at the age of 53.


Fermi's Legacy
Laura and Enrico FermiFermi’s Manhattan Project colleagues remembered him as a consummate scientist. “He was a marvelously wise director of scientific effort in the sense that he knew exactly where to be careful, and he could very frequently guess when it was unnecessary to make more accurate measurements. He had a very good sense of the degree of effort that would give the required result without wasting it,” recounted Leona Marshall Libby, a close friend of Fermi’s.

“Fermi, of course, was outstanding. He just went along his even way, thinking of science and science only,” recalled Manhattan Project leader General Leslie Groves.

“To Fermi with Love” concludes with Fermi’s own words at the ceremony celebrating the tenth anniversary of the operation of Chicago Pile-1. “Scientific thinking and invention flourish best where people are allowed to communicate as much as possible unhampered…Complete secrecy would probably mean complete lack of progress because no fact can be kept a secret better than one that is never discovered.”

Among the many tributes to Fermi’s life and legacy are the Enrico Fermi Award, a prestigious science and technology honor given by the US government. Element 100 is named fermium in his honor."

FYI COL Mikel J. Burroughs Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen Lt Col Charlie Brown LTC Greg Henning LTC Jeff Shearer Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. Maj William W. "Bill" Price Maj Marty Hogan CPT Scott Sharon CWO3 Dennis M. SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL SSG William Jones SGT John " Mac " McConnell SP5 Mark Kuzinski PO1 H Gene Lawrence PO2 Kevin Parker PO3 Bob McCord

SGT (Join to see) Great leader in the science field.

Wondering if it was what he worked with that gave him cancer! What a great mind!