Enrico Fermi

ELEC 424 Writing Project

Final Draft

Jerome Glover

When thinking of great heroes of World War Two it is easy to imagine the soldiers who fought the war at the front lines, the generals who commanded great victories from their headquarters, and the airmen who flew countless missions over hostile territory helping to hasten the end of the war. When thinking of those harrowing times a persons mind often misses the importance of the scientist's contribution to the war. The development of technology for offensive and defensive weapons was critical to the effort. One hero from this group of scientific warriors was Enrico Fermi. His contributions to science have earned him a place as one of the greatest people of the twentieth century. [6] Enrico Fermi was born in Rome on September 29, 1901. He was the third child of Ida and Alberto Fermi. His father worked on the Italian railroad system and his mother taught in elementary schools. [1] His childhood was spent attending elementary school, where he received high marks. It was during this early part of his life that he showed an unusual mathematical ability. [1] His closest friends at this time were his brother and sister. His brother Giulio was one year older than Enrico and was thought to be his mother’s favorite. That is why she was so devastated when Giulio died in the winter of 1915 from complications brought on by an operation to remove an abscess from his neck. Mrs. Fermi became deeply melancholic and could not help the rest of the family deal with the tragedy. [1] Enrico turned to his studies and to his increasing love of mathematics. Enrico first started to feed his hunger for mathematics by visiting the market of Campo dei Fiori and searching through stacks and stacks of books in hopes of finding the rare math book.[2] He was successful on some occasions and would return home and consume the books in his spare time. He loved to not only read about mathematics, but to understand it as well. He had found his passion in life. About this time Enrico met a colleague of his father, Adolfo Amidei, a trained engineer. He would walk part of the way home after work with Alberto Fermi and his son. Although Enrico’s marks in school were high and he was considered to be an excellent student, no one realized that he was a prodigy. It was Amidei who realized the extent of Enrico’s gift. While walking, Enrico would inquire about all the different fields of mathematics that he had heard of. Amidei would explain the fields to him and lend him books on the subjects. Enrico would read and work all of the problems in the books. When Amidei would express doubt that he had worked every problem, Enrico would bring him the proofs to look at. This went on for four years. In 1918, Enrico skipped the last year of his advanced public schooling and received his diploma. While Enrico’s parents always expected their son to attend the University of Rome, Amidei had another plan. There was a little known institution in Pisa for outstanding students of science. Amidei knew that Enrico could pass the test for a fellowship and that the education there would provide Enrico with the best opportunities. After obtaining the best score on the exam, the professors told Enrico that he was “exceptional.” [2] Enrico left for the Reale Scuola Normale of Pisa in November of 1918. He was seventeen years old. He spent the next four years at the school, and completed his doctor’s degree in physics in 1922. [3] He received scholarships to study at the Universities of Leyden and Gottingen, and in 1927, became the professor of theoretical physics at the University of Rome. [4] He was twenty- six years old and the youngest professor in Italy since Galileo. [7] Enrico Fermi's first important contribution to physics came in 1926. He calculated a method to describe the behavior of particles that obeyed the Pauli exclusion principle. [7] This method became known as Fermi statistics. In 1933, Enrico published a theory that described the transformation of a neutron into a proton, electron, and neutrino; this became known as beta decay. Also in 1933, Enrico started to turn from theoretical physics to experimental physics. He was starting to experiment with radioactive particles. In 1934, he showed that a nuclear transformation occurs in almost every element that is subjected to neutron bombardment. [3] In 1938, Enrico Fermi received the Nobel Prize for "his discovery of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation, and for the discovery of nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons." [4] After accepting the award in Sweden, Enrico and his family chose not to return to Italy, but to immigrate to the United States. [5] Italy was fast becoming totalitarian under the rule of the fascist government of Benito Mussolini. Italy had also passed anti-Semitic laws, and Enrico worried for the safety of his family since his wife was Jewish. When Fermi arrived in America, he became a professor at Columbia University in New York. In 1941, he moved to Chicago for a professorship at the University of Chicago. It was in Chicago that he worked on a project for the U.S. government called the Manhattan Project. The project officially began in 1942 and the purpose of it was to develop an atomic bomb. By the end of the year, Fermi had designed and completed the first controlled fission reaction. [7] This was conducted on a volleyball field that was beneath Chicago's stadium. He called his simple contraption an atomic "pile". There is still a plaque at the site that commemorates the day. It reads: "On December 2, 1942, man achieved here the first self-sustaining chain reaction and thereby initiated the controlled release of nuclear energy."

From there they built full-scale reactors to make plutonium for the first atom bombs. In 1944, they moved to Los Alamos for the developing and testing of an atomic bomb. In July 1945, Enrico Fermi was present for the first test of that bomb. In August 1945, the first atom bomb was used in the history of warfare. The bomb was dropped on the City of Hiroshima and two weeks later another bomb was dropped on the City of Nagasaki. World War Two came to an end. Fermi knew that the world had significantly changed and that war had the possibility of becoming even more horrible. In September he wrote a letter in which he stated: "…the new weapon has such destructiveness that in case of a war between two powers both armed with atomic bombs, both belligerents, even the victor, would have their cities destroyed." [2]

Enrico Fermi became a United States citizen in 1944. After the war, he returned to the University of Chicago and continued to research neutrons and radioactivity. He pursued research on the "peaceful uses" of his discoveries. He held a professorship at the universities Institute for Nuclear Studies. [3] At the age of 53 in November 1954, after a prolonged stomach illness that went undiagnosed, he died of stomach cancer. President Eisenhower with the Presidential Award of Merit honored him in December for "his contributions to basic neutron physics and the achievement of the controlled nuclear chain reaction." [5] He is still honored to this day.

Reference List:

[1] Atoms in the Family: My Life with Enrico Fermi; Laura Fermi;1987 [2] Enrico Fermi: Physicist; Emilio Segre; 1970 [3] http://www.nobel.se/physics/laureates/1938/fermi-bio.html [4] http://fnal.gov/about/whatis/enricofermi/html [5] http://www.osti.gov/accomplishments/fermi.html [6] http://time.com/time/time100/scientist/profile/fermi.html [7] http.Encarta.msn.com