Enrico Fermi is an Italian-American physicist.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938. He is the first to build a model of the nuclear reactor in 1942. He was part of the team that worked on making the first atomic bomb in 1945. But he opposed the project to build the "hydrogen bomb".

He was born in 1901 and died in 1954.

He was one of the few modern physicists who excelled in theoretical and experimental physics, and the most prolific in the world, making fundamental contributions to the development of statistical mechanics, quantum theory, and particle physics, and to the development of nuclear energy.

He was called by several titles, including "the father of the nuclear bomb", "the engineer of the nuclear age", "the integrated physicist", "the pope of science" and "the man who knows everything about physics".

In 1999, Time magazine included him in its list of the 100 Greatest People of the 20th Century.

Birth and upbringing

Enrico Fermi was born in Rome, Italy, on September 29, 1901. He was the third and youngest son of a Catholic Christian family from Piacenza, in the north of the country.

Although he was baptized, he was an atheist his whole life.

His father, Alberto, held a managerial position in a railway company, while his mother, Ida Degatis, was a primary school teacher, and because his parents were busy, they entrusted Fermi and his brother Giulio (who was inseparable from his brother) to a governess in the countryside.

He did not return to his family's home until he was two and a half years old.

He was an intelligent and shy child, known for his introversion, and it is likely that he learned to read and write from his older sister at an early age.

He was also fascinated by mathematics, and only calmed down when he found an explanation for the puzzling things he saw, and his ability to accurately think was often misunderstood.

He also loved games, and exercised regularly, especially mountaineering.

Accompanying him on his sports tours was a university student named Laura Capone, whom he married in 1928.

At the age of 14, Fermi showed great interest in physics after the sudden death of his brother in the winter of 1915. He was able to overcome his grief by indulging in reading science books.

At that time he met his friend Enrico Persico, with whom he shared an interest in physics, as they were conducting some simple experiments for fun.

Their friendship and love of physics continued.

American nuclear scientist Robert Oppenheimer (right) with Italian American nuclear scientist Enrico Fermi (French)

Early scientific genius

Fermi was regularly top of his class at his junior high school "Ginanesio", though he didn't spend all his time studying, and his strong memory helped him remember things as he learned them, so he didn't need to repeat them or study them to remember them.

He bought second-hand books from the Campo d'Aubi Fiori stalls and often corrected them. One of them was an old textbook on physics published in 1840, consisting of 900 pages, which he read in its entirety at the age of 13.

His father's friend, engineer Adolfo Amedei, had a great influence on his life, as he encouraged him to study mathematics and physics, and he used to give him books about them, and Fermi absorbed them quickly.

After realizing Fermi's exceptional intellectual abilities, he suggested that he enroll dually in both the "University of Pisa" and the "medium school" (school normal) at the same time.

In October 1918, Fermi submitted to the university entrance examination a paper on "Properties of Sound Propagation" which astonished the professors with the level of knowledge of physics and mathematics involved in it, and thus finished first, and was accepted with a full scholarship.

PhD in 4 years

During his school years, Fermi mastered the fields of relativistic physics, statistical mechanics, and quantum theory, to the extent that he became a reference for his colleagues and professors.

After a year of his studies at the university, he wrote a dissertation (still preserved at the University of Chicago) in which he put forward the theories of mechanics and the structure of matter that he studied himself, as he was following up on Lanck's "revolutionary" theory of radiation and other advanced materials.

In 1920, Fermi was accepted into the Physics Department with two other students, and because there were few of them, they were allowed to use the research laboratory freely.

There he carried out X-ray experiments, and made this the subject of his doctoral dissertation, under the supervision of his teacher, Luigi Buccianti.

He was holding a seminar on quantum physics at the request of his professor.

In 1921, he published his first scientific work in the Italian journal "Nova Cimento" on the theory of "general relativity", in which he presented a system of coordinates known as "Fermi coordinates".

In 1922, he obtained his scientific degree with distinction in Physics, as well as a document confirming his status as a graduate from the “School Normal”, when he was 21 years old.

In 1923 he received a scholarship from the Italian government and spent 6 months at the Max Born Center for Theoretical Physics at the University of Göttingen.

In 1924, he won another scholarship at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and resided at the institute that was run by the physicist Paul Ehrenfest, and this period was more stimulating on Fermi's intellectual level, and fruitful in scientific results.

Physicist Enrico Fermi in his laboratory (Getty Images)

professional path

At the end of 1924 Fermi returned to his country, and was appointed to the position of temporary professor of physics and mathematical mechanics at the University of Florence, at the age of 24.

Fermi had been trying to increase his chances of an academic job but was disappointed after losing a competition for the chair of mathematical physics at the University of Cagliari in Sardinia.

Between 1923 and 1925, he published important contributions to quantum theory.

Beginning in 1926, he published the "statistical laws" governing particles subject to the Pauli exclusion principle (such as electrons), which were later named "fermium" after his role in writing the theory of their group behaviour.

In 1927, he won the position of the first chair in theoretical physics that was established in Italy, to become a professor of this science at the University of Rome at the age of 25, and he remained there until 1938.

In 1929, he was appointed a member of the Italian Royal Academy, then joined the Fascist Party.

But he opposed it when Mussolini issued the racist laws.

Fermi method

Fermi's approach to teaching physics was based on 3 parts: the first was persuading some graduate students at the University of Rome to learn modern physics, and the second was working on a research and experiment program in contemporary physics, the most important of which was giving famous lectures, writing articles, and writing a textbook on modern atomic physics.

Fermi's friend recounted that he wrote the textbook in pencil while lying on his back, the writing flawless, though composed by his memory and knowledge.

Fermi was known as an inspiring professor, and earned the university a reputation that attracted foreign students to it, as he was appreciated not only for his scientific value, but for the simplicity and clarity of his presentations, his attention to detail and careful preparation, in addition to transcribing his lecture notes into books.

He was also famous for the method of obtaining approximate and fast answers through calculations based on initial assumptions estimated in a logical way, which gives results within the correct result scale. This method was later known as the "Fermi method".

Fermi would share with his students the work he was doing, using what Frédéric Sicré called the "rhetoric of example."

He would gather colleagues and graduate students at the end of the day to discuss a problem, often from his own research.

Among his notable students were the Chinese physicists Chen Ning Yang, who won the Nobel Prize in 1957, and the German Jacques Steinberger, who won the Nobel Prize in 1988.

Enrico Fermi was known for his interesting and simple style of teaching physics to students (Getty Images)

The road to the Nobel Prize

In 1933, Fermi developed a theory explaining the paradox of beta-ray activity.

A year later, his interest turned to the field of atomic nucleus experiments, as he continued his experiments with the neutron, with a number of his assistants in the university laboratory where he was teaching science.

But the University of Rome could not afford $34,000 to buy one gram of radium for his research.

So he borrowed it from the Public Health Office, and worked on mixing the "radon" gas (which is released by radium) with beryllium to extract neutrons that do not carry any electrical charges.

The importance of his scientific discovery is based on the production of radiation by slowing down the movement of neutrons in the atom, which is the first necessary step for a nuclear explosion.

After that, he was widely known in the scientific community for his careful research in which he revealed element number "93" (neptunium) in the periodic table of the elements.

When the facts of this scientific discovery were published, a number of Italian journalists loyal to the fascist President Mussolini suggested that his name be given to the new discovered substance.

Escape from Italy

Fermi was offered several jobs from various American universities, but he refused them all until a “racist” law was passed in 1938 that directly affected his family (his wife is from a Jewish family), and caused a number of his assistants to be unemployed, so he made a final decision to leave Italy, heading to America.

In the same year, Fermi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, at the age of 37, for his work on radioactivity caused by neutron bombardment and for the discovery of transuranic elements.

The ceremony was held in Stockholm, Sweden, and from there he went with his family to the United States to escape the Mussolini regime, and he obtained American citizenship in 1944.

From 1939 to 1942, he worked as a professor of physics at Columbia University in New York, then as a professor at the Institute for Nuclear Studies at the University of Chicago.

Enrico Fermi invented the atomic bomb for fear that the Germans would reach it first, which was the reason for the creation of the "Manhattan Project" (Getty Images)

Italian navigator

In early 1939, Fermi discovered that firing uranium neutrons into fissile uranium could cause other uranium atoms to split, setting off a chain reaction that released huge amounts of energy.

After he suggested the possibility of dispensing with the molar accelerator by what he called "piles", a fleet of aircraft transported enough uranium ore from Canada and the Congo, and put it at the disposal of Fermi, who, with his colleague Szilard of Hungary, proceeded to build experimental piles.

This rubble was transferred from Columbia University to the University of Chicago, where research was continued in a ballroom.

There were also laboratories and warehouses around the university for the collection of uranium, pure graphite and cadmium.

Less than two months after the start of work, the atomic pile (nuclear reactor) was invented, and the first nuclear chain reaction was inaugurated on December 2, 1942, in a laboratory located under an abandoned squash court in Chicago. The main purpose of this reactor was to manufacture nuclear weapons.

The scientists were overjoyed at the time, so they sent the government a message, "The Italian navigator has arrived in the New World."

That day became the "academic" birth of the atomic age and scientists' control of its energy. Three years after Fermi's death, the atomic power plant was inaugurated in Shipingport, Pennsylvania in 1957, and it was the first large atomic power plant to be used for peaceful purposes, such as generating electricity.

In 1959, the first nuclear reactor used exclusively for medical services was installed, located at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, and among its many benefits is the treatment of people with brain cancer.

A devastating nuclear weapon

After the discovery of the nuclear reactor, Fermi stood looking out his office window at Columbia University, dejected to realize that a single nuclear bomb could destroy all of New York City in his sights.

As a result, Fermi and his friend Szilard feared that the Germans would precede the world in the manufacture of the atomic bomb, especially as they were the pioneers of atomic physics, so he went with Eugene Wegner to Long Island to visit Einstein, and there they made him sign a letter to President Roosevelt with these fears.

On December 6, 1941, the secret engineering "Manhattan Project" was launched.

It is an American program composed of about 1,500 physicists, chemists and military scientists, with the aim of achieving the design of the first atomic bomb, and this was motivated by fear of Nazi Germany developing such weapons.

The "Chicago Pile 1" atomic reactor formed the first stages of this project, which cost nearly two billion dollars spent on production facilities and on research in university laboratories in secret.

Fermi played a crucial role in the research and development work that paved the way for the atomic bomb during World War II.

In 1944, he was entrusted with the responsibility of managing the department of high development of the atomic bomb, and he was a consultant for all the design stages of the bomb.

Within 3 years, the "Manhattan Project" had accomplished two different types of American atomic bombs, which bore the two code names:

  • The "Fat Man" with an onion-like shape and more complex, 10 feet long, contained a ball of "Plononium-239", and was surrounded by lumps of high explosive material, so that it produces a symmetric, high-precision implosion.

  • Little boy, which launches a nuclear explosion by shooting a piece of "uranium-235" on another piece to form a nuclear chain reaction.

  • On July 16, 1945, the first nuclear bomb was successfully tested in a remote desert area on the outskirts of New Mexico, code-named "Trentney."

    On the sixth of August of the same year, the first bomb was detonated over the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

    Three days later, the second bomb was detonated over the city of Nagasaki, and the number of victims was estimated at two hundred thousand dead, in addition to the radioactive damage that affected several subsequent generations.

    The nuclear reactor, which Enrico Fermi contributed to, had a role in treating brain cancer (Getty Images)

    Disappointment

    The connection between science and the development of weapons was so close that World War I was called the "Chemists' War" and World War II was called the "Physicists' War".

    The invention of the nuclear bomb embodied Einstein's saying, "The power of the world preceded the vigilance of its conscience," because this invention was not met with a moral or even legal deterrent.

    After World War II, Fermi returned to Chicago in 1946 as a professor at the Institute of Nuclear Physics, and a member of the new Institute of Nuclear Physics, and continued to investigate and scrutinize his previous discoveries.

    His interest had shifted to particle physics or "high energy physics", and he conducted research on the origin of cosmic rays and theories about the amazing energy contained in cosmic ray particles.

    Awards

    • Mauchi Medal in 1926.

    • Hughes Medal in 1942.

    • Medal of Merit from the US Congress in 1946.

    • Franklin Medal in 1947.

    • Foreign Member Award of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) 1950.

    • Barnard Medal for Meritorious Service to the Flag, 1950.

    • Rumford Prize in 1953.

    • Max Planck Medal in 1954.

    after his death

    • The Atomic Energy Commission, which had awarded him $25,000 in 1954, announced that its future grants to scientists would bear his name.

    • His name is immortalized by the Institute of Nuclear Physics and is now known as the "Enrico Fermi Institute".

    • He named a new element, fermium-100.

    • Some of the particles that obey the Fermi-Dirac laws are called fermions.

    • The longitudinal measurement of the dimensions of atomic and nuclear physics "m10-m15" (m10-15m) was also called "Fermi", because he used it in his estimates.

    • Fermi Lab is a laboratory in Illinois, USA, for research in nuclear physics and elementary particles.

    • The name "fermium" was given to an element discovered in 1952 in the remnants of a nuclear explosion and the symbol "Fm" (Fm).

    Death

    In October 1954, Fermi developed stomach cancer, diagnosed at Billings Memorial Hospital.

    After 50 days, he died in his sleep on November 28 at his home in Chicago, Illinois, at the age of 53, and his body was buried in Oak Woods Cemetery.