Physicist — Enrico Fermi (Rome, 1901 – Chicago, 1954) was one of the greatest physicists of the twentieth century, a rare figure who excelled equally in theory and in experiment. He led the group of «via Panisperna boys» in Rome, with whom he discovered that slow neutrons are especially effective at inducing nuclear reactions. In 1938 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics and took the opportunity to emigrate to the United States, taking his Jewish wife away from the Fascist racial laws. In Chicago, in 1942, he achieved the first controlled nuclear chain reaction, laying the foundations of nuclear energy, and later took part in the Manhattan Project. He made fundamental theoretical contributions, from particle statistics to the theory of beta decay.
Curiosity
On 2 December 1942, after the atomic pile started up beneath the stands of the Chicago stadium, a coded message announced the success: «The Italian navigator has landed in the New World».
Theories and contributions
- Fermi–Dirac statistics — Describes the distribution of particles with half-integer spin (fermions), subject to the Pauli exclusion principle.
- Theory of beta decay — First theory of the weak interaction (1934), introducing the idea of a force responsible for neutron decay.
- Controlled chain reaction — First nuclear reactor (Chicago Pile-1, 1942), which demonstrated the feasibility of self-sustaining fission.
Present in chapters
Linked atoms
2 linked atoms.