The Italian-American physicist who built the first nuclear reactor and whose theoretical work on beta decay and nuclear reactions provided essential foundations for fusion physics.
Enrico Fermi (29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954) was born in Rome, Italy. He earned his doctorate from the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa (1922) and became professor of theoretical physics at the University of Rome (1927). After receiving the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics, he emigrated to the United States to escape Fascist Italy’s racial laws and joined Columbia University, then the University of Chicago.[1]
At Los Alamos and later at Chicago, Fermi contributed to early controlled-fusion discussions and supervised students who would become leaders of the American fusion program.[2]
Fermi received the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics “for his demonstrations of the existence of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation, and for his related discovery of nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons.”[3]
Fermi died of stomach cancer on 28 November 1954 at age 53. The Enrico Fermi Award, one of the U.S. government’s most prestigious science honors, is named for him. Element 100 (fermium) and Fermilab also bear his name.