Enrico Fermi
A genial experimentalist and theoretician
Enrico Fermi dans son laboratoire.
Musée Curie
Enrico Fermi (Rome, September 29, 1901 - Chicago, November 29, 1954) was a genial physicist. Talented experimentalist, he knew how to express the experimental results he had obtained through theory.
In 1927, he introduced the Fermi-Dirac statistics which governs the behaviour of "spin 1/2" particles such as electrons or protons (later called fermions from his name). It was the result of his research on particles behaviour in an ideal gas.
In 1934 taking seriously the invention of the Wolfgang Pauli's "neutrino", he developed the theory of "beta-minus" disintegrations assuming that this phenomenon is due to the transformation inside the atomic nucleus, of a neutron into a proton accompanied by the creation of an electron-neutrino pair.
With its prestigious team of Rome (the "ragazzi of Panisperna"), knowing that the neutron which has no electric charge can penetrate more easily into the nuclei than alpha particles, he was the first to produce large quantities of artificial radionuclei. They also try to produce transuranic elements, beyond uranium.
Fermi's group enjoys great prestige and ingratiated Mussolini for a while.
However, the attempt to create a competitive Research Center collapses, and the political climate becomes more and more oppressive. In 1938, Enrico Fermi was awarded the Nobel Prize. He went to Stockholm to receive it, but didnot return to Italy. His wife was Jewish and they feared what could happen under Mussolini's regime. They left to the United States.
The Chicago pile, the first atomic pile in the world and the first to achieve a self-sustaining and controlled chain reaction , was designed by Enrico Fermi and his team as part of the Manhattan Project that would lead to the atomic bomb in 1945 . The atomic pile, ancestor of our nuclear reactors, was built in 1942 under the stands of the American football stadium at the Chicago University. On 2 December 1942, the team led by Fermi withdrew from the pile a cadmium coated control bar, triggering the nuclear fission chain reaction.
AtomicArchivesEnrico Fermi was involved in the Manhattan Project led by Robert Oppenheimer during the Second World War. He participates in the conception of the first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, on August 6, 1945. On August 9 a second bomb, based on plutonium, is dropped on Nagasaki.
On august 28, Fermi wrote a long letter to Eduardo Amaldi, remained in Italy, "It was a work of great scientific interest and having helped end a war that threatened to go on for months even years has undoubtedly been a source of satisfaction. "
Enrico Fermi contributed also to the conception of the H-bomb by the United States.
After the war, although remaining in the United States, Fermi devoted himself to research. He founded a new school of physics in Chicago. He had close relationships with the Italian physicists and assisted in the rebuilding of Italian physics. One can say that there exist a is Fermi's school, characterized by close association between experimentalists and theoreticians.
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