 Enrico
Fermi was born in Rome on 29th September, 1901, the son of Alberto Fermi, a
Chief Inspector of the Ministry of Communications, and Ida de Gattis. He
attended a local grammar school, and his early aptitude for mathematics and
physics was recognized and encouraged by his father's colleagues, among whom A.
Amidei. In 1918, he won a fellowship of the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa. He
spent four years at the University of Pisa,
gaining his doctor's degree in physics in 1922, with Professor Puccianti.
Soon afterwards, in 1923, he was awarded a scholarship from the Italian
Government and spent some months with Professor
Max Born in Göttingen. With a Rockefeller Fellowship, in 1924, he moved to
Leyden to work with P. Ehrenfest, and later that same year he returned to Italy
to occupy for two years (1924-1926) the post of Lecturer in Mathematical Physics
and Mechanics at the University of Florence.
In 1926, Fermi discovered the statistical laws, nowadays known as the «Fermi
statistics», governing the particles subject to Pauli's exclusion principle
(now referred to as «fermions», in contrast with «bosons» which obey the
Bose-Einstein statistics).
In 1927, Fermi was elected Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of
Rome (a post which he retained until 1938, when he - immediately after the
receipt of the Nobel Prize - emigrated to America, primarily to escape
Mussolini's fascist dictatorship).
During the early years of his career in Rome he occupied himself with
electrodynamic problems and with theoretical investigations on various
spectroscopic phenomena. But a capital turning-point came when he directed his
attention from the outer electrons towards the atomic nucleus itself. In 1934,
he evolved the ß-decay theory, coalescing previous work on radiation theory
with Pauli's idea of the neutrino. Following the discovery by Curie and Joliot
of artificial radioactivity (1934), he demonstrated that nuclear transformation
occurs in almost every element subjected to neutron bombardment. This work
resulted in the discovery of slow neutrons that same year, leading to the
discovery of nuclear fission and the production of elements lying beyond what
was until then the Periodic Table.
In 1938, Fermi was without doubt the greatest expert on neutrons, and he
continued his work on this topic on his arrival in the United States, where he
was soon appointed Professor of Physics at Columbia
University, N.Y. ( 1939 - I942).
Upon the discovery of fission, by Hahn and Strassmann early in 1939, he
immediately saw the possibility of emission of secondary neutrons and of a chain
reaction. He proceeded to work with tremendous enthusiasm, and directed a
classical series of experiments which ultimately led to the atomic pile and the
first controlled nuclear chain reaction. This took place in Chicago on December
2, 1942 - on a volleyball field situated beneath Chicago's stadium. He
subsequently played an important part in solving the problems connected with the
development of the first atomic bomb (He was one of the leaders of the team of
physicists on the Manhattan Project for the development of nuclear energy and
the atomic bomb.)
In 1944, Fermi became American citizen, and at the end of the war (1946) he
accepted a professorship at the Institute for Nuclear Studies of the University
of Chicago, a position which he held until his untimely death in 1954. There he
turned his attention to high-energy physics, and led investigations into the
pion-nucleon interaction.
During the last years of his life Fermi occupied himself with the problem of the
mysterious origin of cosmic rays, thereby developing a theory, according to
which a universal magnetic field - acting as a giant accelerator - would account
for the fantastic energies present in the cosmic ray particles.
Professor Fermi was the author of numerous papers both in theoretical and
experimental physics. His most important contributions were:
"Sulla quantizzazione del gas perfetto monoatomico", Rend. Accad.
Naz. Lincei, 1935 (also in Z. Phys., 1936), concerning the
foundations of the statistics of the electronic gas and of the gases made of
particles that obey the Pauli Principle.
Several papers published in Rend. Accad. Naz. Lincei, 1927-28, deal with
the statistical model of the atom (Thomas-Fermi atom model) and give a
semiquantitative method for the calculation of atomic properties. A resumé of
this work was published by Fermi in the volume: Quantentheorie und Chemie,
edited by H. Falkenhagen, Leipzig, 1928.
"Uber die magnetischen Momente der AtomKerne", Z. Phys., 1930,
is a quantitative theory of the hyperfine structures of spectrum lines. The
magnetic moments of some nuclei are deduced therefrom.
"Tentativo di una teoria dei raggi ß", Ricerca Scientifica,
1933 (also Z. Phys., 1934) proposes a theory of the emission of ß-rays,
based on the hypothesis, first proposed by Pauli, of the existence of the
neutrino.
The Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Fermi for his work on the artificial
radioactivity produced by neutrons, and for nuclear reactions brought about by
slow neutrons. The first paper on this subject "Radioattività indotta dal
bombardamento di neutroni" was published by him in Ricerca Scientifica,
1934. All the work is collected in the following papers by himself and various
collaborators: "Artificial radioactivity produced by neutron
bombardment", Proc. Roy. Soc., 1934 and 1935; "On the
absorption and diffusion of slow neutrons", Phys. Rev., 1936. The
theoretical problems connected with the neutron are discussed by Fermi in the
paper "Sul moto dei neutroni lenti", Ricerca Scientfica, 1936.
His Collected Papers are being published by a Committee under the
Chairmanship of his friend and former pupil, Professor
E. Segrè (Nobel Prize winner 1959, with O. Chamberlain, for the discovery of
the antiproton).
Fermi was member of several academies and learned societies in Italy and abroad
(he was early in his career, in 1929, chosen among the first 30 members of the
Royal Academy of Italy).
As lecturer he was always in great demand (he has also given several courses at
the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and Stanford
University, Calif.). He was the first recipient of a special award of
$50,000 - which now bears his name - for work on the atom.
Professor Fermi married Laura Capon in 1928. They had one son Giulio and one
daughter Nella. His favourite pastimes were walking, mountaineering, and winter
sports.
He died in Chicago on 29th November, 1954.
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