Enrico Fermi

Enrico Fermi
Fermi in 1943
Born	(1901-09-29)29 September 1901 Rome, Italy
Died	28 November 1954(1954-11-28) (aged 53) Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Citizenship	Italy (1901–1944) United States (1944–1954)
Alma mater	Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (laurea)
Known for	Demonstrating first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction Fermion Fermi gas Fermi–Dirac statistics Fermi's golden rule Fermi paradox Fermi method Thomas–Fermi model Thomas–Fermi screening Fermi theory of beta decay Chandrasekhar–Fermi method
Spouse	Laura Capon ​ (m. 1928)​
Children	2
Awards	Matteucci Medal (1926) Nobel Prize (1938) Hughes Medal (1942) Medal for Merit (1946) Franklin Medal (1947) ForMemRS (1950) Barnard Medal for Meritorious Service to Science (1950) Rumford Prize (1953) Max Planck Medal (1954)
Scientific career
Fields	Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa University of Göttingen Leiden University University of Florence Sapienza University of Rome Columbia University University of Chicago
Academic advisors	Luigi Puccianti Max Born Paul Ehrenfest
Doctoral students	Harold Agnew Edoardo Amaldi Owen Chamberlain Geoffrey Chew Mildred Dresselhaus Jerome Friedman Richard Garwin Marvin Goldberger Tsung-Dao Lee Ettore Majorana Arthur Rosenfeld Emilio Segrè Sam Treiman
Other notable students	Jack Steinberger Chen Ning Yang
Signature

Enrico Fermi (Italian:

Enrico Fermi was born in Rome, Italy, on 29 September 1901.

In 1914, Fermi, who used to often meet with his father in front of the office after work, met a colleague of his father called Adolfo Amidei, who would walk part of the way home with Alberto. Enrico had learned that Adolfo was interested in mathematics and physics and took the opportunity to ask Adolfo a question about geometry. Adolfo understood that the young Fermi was referring to projective geometry and then proceeded to give him a book on the subject written by Theodor Reye. Two months later, Fermi returned the book, having solved all the problems proposed at the end of the book, some of which Adolfo considered difficult. Upon verifying this, Adolfo felt that Fermi was "a prodigy, at least with respect to geometry", and further mentored the boy, providing him with more books on physics and mathematics. Adolfo noted that Fermi had a very good memory and thus could return the books after having read them because he could remember their content very well.^[15]

Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa

Fermi graduated from high school in July 1918, having skipped the third year entirely. At Amidei's urging, Fermi learned

At the Scuola Normale Superiore, Fermi played pranks with fellow student Franco Rasetti; the two became close friends and collaborators. Fermi was advised by Luigi Puccianti, director of the physics laboratory, who said there was little he could teach Fermi and often asked Fermi to teach him something instead. Fermi's knowledge of quantum physics was such that Puccianti asked him to organize seminars on the topic.^[19] During this time Fermi learned tensor calculus, a technique key to general relativity.^[20] Fermi initially chose mathematics as his major, but soon switched to physics. He remained largely self-taught, studying general relativity, quantum mechanics, and atomic physics.^[21]

In September 1920, Fermi was admitted to the physics department. Since there were only three students in the department—Fermi, Rasetti, and Nello Carrara—Puccianti let them freely use the laboratory for whatever purposes they chose. Fermi decided that they should research X-ray crystallography, and the three worked to produce a Laue photograph—an X-ray photograph of a crystal.^[22] During 1921, his third year at the university, Fermi published his first scientific works in the Italian journal Nuovo Cimento. The first was entitled "On the dynamics of a rigid system of electrical charges in translational motion" (Sulla dinamica di un sistema rigido di cariche elettriche in moto traslatorio). A sign of things to come was that the mass was expressed as a tensor—a mathematical construct commonly used to describe something moving and changing in three-dimensional space. In classical mechanics, mass is a scalar quantity, but in relativity, it changes with velocity. The second paper was "On the electrostatics of a uniform gravitational field of electromagnetic charges and on the weight of electromagnetic charges" (Sull'elettrostatica di un campo gravitazionale uniforme e sul peso delle masse elettromagnetiche). Using general relativity, Fermi showed that a charge has a weight equal to U/c², where U was the electrostatic energy of the system, and c is the speed of light.^[21]

The first paper seemed to point out a contradiction between the electrodynamic theory and the relativistic one concerning the calculation of the electromagnetic masses, as the former predicted a value of 4/3 U/c². Fermi addressed this the next year in a paper "Concerning a contradiction between

Fermi submitted his thesis, "A theorem on probability and some of its applications" (Un teorema di calcolo delle probabilità ed alcune sue applicazioni), to the Scuola Normale Superiore in July 1922, and received his laurea at the unusually young age of 20. The thesis was on X-ray diffraction images. Theoretical physics was not yet considered a discipline in Italy, and the only thesis that would have been accepted was experimental physics. For this reason, Italian physicists were slow in embracing the new ideas like relativity coming from Germany. Since Fermi was quite at home in the lab doing experimental work, this did not pose insurmountable problems for him.^[25]

While writing the appendix for the Italian edition of the book Fundamentals of Einstein Relativity by

Professorships in Italy were granted by competition (concorso) for a vacant chair, the applicants being rated on their publications by a committee of professors. Fermi applied for a chair of mathematical physics at the University of Cagliari on Sardinia, but was narrowly passed over in favour of Giovanni Giorgi.^[32] In 1926, at the age of 24, he applied for a professorship at the Sapienza University of Rome. This was a new chair, one of the first three in theoretical physics in Italy, that had been created by the Minister of Education at the urging of professor Orso Mario Corbino, who was the university's professor of experimental physics, the director of the Institute of Physics, and a member of Benito Mussolini's cabinet. Corbino, who also chaired the selection committee, hoped that the new chair would raise the standard and reputation of physics in Italy.^[33] The committee chose Fermi ahead of Enrico Persico and Aldo Pontremoli,^[34] and Corbino helped Fermi recruit his team, which was soon joined by notable students such as Edoardo Amaldi, Bruno Pontecorvo, Ettore Majorana and Emilio Segrè, and by Franco Rasetti, whom Fermi had appointed as his assistant.^[35] They soon nicknamed the "Via Panisperna boys" after the street where the Institute of Physics was located.^[36]

Fermi married

During their time in Rome, Fermi and his group made important contributions to many practical and theoretical aspects of physics. In 1928, he published his Introduction to Atomic Physics (Introduzione alla fisica atomica), which provided Italian university students with an up-to-date and accessible text. Fermi also conducted public lectures and wrote popular articles for scientists and teachers in order to spread knowledge of the new physics as widely as possible.[44] Part of his teaching method was to gather his colleagues and graduate students together at the end of the day and go over a problem, often from his own research.^[44][45] A sign of success was that foreign students now began to come to Italy. The most notable of these was the German physicist Hans Bethe,^[46] who came to Rome as a Rockefeller Foundation fellow, and collaborated with Fermi on a 1932 paper "On the Interaction between Two Electrons" (German: Über die Wechselwirkung von Zwei Elektronen).^[44]

At this time, physicists were puzzled by

Fermi's theory, aside from bolstering Pauli's proposal of the neutrino, has a special significance in the history of modern physics. One must remember that only the naturally occurring β emitters were known at the time the theory was proposed. Later when positron decay was discovered, the process was easily incorporated within Fermi's original framework. On the basis of his theory, the capture of an orbital electron by a nucleus was predicted and eventually observed. With time, experimental data accumulated significantly. Although peculiarities have been observed many times in β decay, Fermi's theory always has been equal to the challenge.
The consequences of the Fermi theory are vast. For example, β spectroscopy was established as a powerful tool for the study of nuclear structure. But perhaps the most influential aspect of this work of Fermi is that his particular form of the β interaction established a pattern that has been appropriate for the study of other types of interactions. It was the first successful theory of the creation and annihilation of material particles. Previously, only photons had been known to be created and destroyed.[49]

In January 1934,

Fermi had the idea to resort to replacing the polonium-beryllium neutron source with a radon-beryllium one, which he created by filling a glass bulb with beryllium powder, evacuating the air, and then adding 50 mCi of radon gas, supplied by Giulio Cesare Trabacchi [it].^[56][57] This created a much stronger neutron source, the effectiveness of which declined with the 3.8-day half-life of radon. He knew that this source would also emit gamma rays, but, on the basis of his theory, he believed that this would not affect the results of the experiment. He started by bombarding platinum, an element with a high atomic number that was readily available, without success. He turned to aluminium, which emitted an alpha particle and produced sodium, which then decayed into magnesium by beta particle emission. He tried lead, without success, and then fluorine in the form of calcium fluoride, which emitted an alpha particle and produced nitrogen, decaying into oxygen by beta particle emission. In all, he induced radioactivity in 22 different elements.^[58] Fermi rapidly reported the discovery of neutron-induced radioactivity in the Italian journal La Ricerca Scientifica on 25 March 1934.^[57][59][60]

The natural radioactivity of thorium and uranium made it hard to determine what was happening when these elements were bombarded with neutrons but, after correctly eliminating the presence of elements lighter than uranium but heavier than lead, Fermi concluded that they had created new elements, which he called ausenium and hesperium.^[61][55] The chemist Ida Noddack suggested that some of the experiments could have produced lighter elements than lead rather than new, heavier elements. Her suggestion was not taken seriously at the time because her team had not carried out any experiments with uranium or built the theoretical basis for this possibility. At that time, fission was thought to be improbable if not impossible on theoretical grounds. While physicists expected elements with higher atomic numbers to form from neutron bombardment of lighter elements, nobody expected neutrons to have enough energy to split a heavier atom into two light element fragments in the manner that Noddack suggested.^[62][61]

The Via Panisperna boys also noticed some unexplained effects. The experiment seemed to work better on a wooden table than on a marble tabletop. Fermi remembered that Joliot-Curie and Chadwick had noted that

In 1938, Fermi received the Nobel Prize in Physics at the age of 37 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".^[65] After Fermi received the prize in Stockholm, he did not return home to Italy but rather continued to New York City with his family in December 1938, where they applied for permanent residency. The decision to move to America and become US citizens was due primarily to the racial laws in Italy.^[39][66]

Manhattan Project

Fermi arrived in New York City on 2 January 1939.

I remember very vividly the first month, January, 1939, that I started working at the Pupin Laboratories because things began happening very fast. In that period, Niels Bohr was on a lecture engagement at the Princeton University and I remember one afternoon Willis Lamb came back very excited and said that Bohr had leaked out great news. The great news that had leaked out was the discovery of fission and at least the outline of its interpretation. Then, somewhat later that same month, there was a meeting in Washington where the possible importance of the newly discovered phenomenon of fission was first discussed in semi-jocular earnest as a possible source of nuclear power.^[74]

Noddack was proven right after all. Fermi had dismissed the possibility of fission on the basis of his calculations, but he had not taken into account the

The Advisory Committee on Uranium provided money for Fermi to buy graphite,[86] and he built a pile of graphite bricks on the seventh floor of the Pupin Hall laboratory.^[87] By August 1941, he had six tons of uranium oxide and thirty tons of graphite, which he used to build a still larger pile in Schermerhorn Hall at Columbia.^[88]

The S-1 Section of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, as the Advisory Committee on Uranium was now known, met on 18 December 1941, with the US now engaged in World War II, making its work urgent. Most of the effort sponsored by the committee had been directed at producing enriched uranium, but Committee member Arthur Compton determined that a feasible alternative was plutonium, which could be mass-produced in nuclear reactors by the end of 1944.^[89] He decided to concentrate the plutonium work at the University of Chicago. Fermi reluctantly moved, and his team became part of the new Metallurgical Laboratory there.^[90]

The possible results of a self-sustaining nuclear reaction were unknown, so it seemed inadvisable to build the first nuclear reactor on the University of Chicago campus in the middle of the city. Compton found a location in the Argonne Woods Forest Preserve, about 20 miles (32 km) from Chicago. Stone & Webster was contracted to develop the site, but the work was halted by an industrial dispute. Fermi then persuaded Compton that he could build the reactor in the squash court under the stands of the University of Chicago's Stagg Field. Construction of the pile began on 6 November 1942, and Chicago Pile-1 went critical on 2 December.^[91] The shape of the pile was intended to be roughly spherical, but as work proceeded Fermi calculated that criticality could be achieved without finishing the entire pile as planned.^[92]

This experiment was a landmark in the quest for energy, and it was typical of Fermi's approach. Every step was carefully planned, and every calculation was meticulously done.^[91] When the first self-sustained nuclear chain reaction was achieved, Compton made a coded phone call to James B. Conant, the chairman of the National Defense Research Committee.

I picked up the phone and called Conant. He was reached at the President's office at Harvard University. "Jim," I said, "you'll be interested to know that the Italian navigator has just landed in the new world." Then, half apologetically, because I had led the S-l Committee to believe that it would be another week or more before the pile could be completed, I added, "the earth was not as large as he had estimated, and he arrived at the new world sooner than he had expected."

"Is that so," was Conant's excited response. "Were the natives friendly?"

"Everyone landed safe and happy."^[93]

To continue the research where it would not pose a public health hazard, the reactor was disassembled and moved to the Argonne Woods site. There Fermi directed experiments on nuclear reactions, reveling in the opportunities provided by the reactor's abundant production of free neutrons.^[94] The laboratory soon branched out from physics and engineering into using the reactor for biological and medical research. Initially, Argonne was run by Fermi as part of the University of Chicago, but it became a separate entity with Fermi as its director in May 1944.^[95]

When the air-cooled X-10 Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge went critical on 4 November 1943, Fermi was on hand just in case something went wrong. The technicians woke him early so that he could see it happen.^[96] Getting X-10 operational was another milestone in the plutonium project. It provided data on reactor design, training for DuPont staff in reactor operation, and produced the first small quantities of reactor-bred plutonium.^[97] Fermi became an American citizen in July 1944, the earliest date the law allowed.^[98]

In September 1944, Fermi inserted the first uranium fuel slug into the B Reactor at the Hanford Site, the production reactor designed to breed plutonium in large quantities. Like X-10, it had been designed by Fermi's team at the Metallurgical Laboratory and built by DuPont, but it was much larger and was water-cooled. Over the next few days, 838 tubes were loaded, and the reactor went critical. Shortly after midnight on 27 September, the operators began to withdraw the control rods to initiate production. At first, all appeared to be well, but around 03:00, the power level started to drop and by 06:30 the reactor had shut down completely. The Army and DuPont turned to Fermi's team for answers. The cooling water was investigated to see if there was a leak or contamination. The next day the reactor suddenly started up again, only to shut down once more a few hours later. The problem was traced to neutron poisoning from xenon-135 or Xe-135, a fission product with a half-life of 9.1 to 9.4 hours. Fermi and John Wheeler both deduced that Xe-135 was responsible for absorbing neutrons in the reactor, thereby sabotaging the fission process. Fermi was recommended by colleague Emilio Segrè to ask Chien-Shiung Wu, as she prepared a printed draft on this topic to be published by the Physical Review.^[99] Upon reading the draft, Fermi and the scientists confirmed their suspicions: Xe-135 indeed absorbed neutrons, in fact it had a huge neutron cross-section.^{[100][101][102]} DuPont had deviated from the Metallurgical Laboratory's original design in which the reactor had 1,500 tubes arranged in a circle, and had added 504 tubes to fill in the corners. The scientists had originally considered this over-engineering a waste of time and money, but Fermi realized that if all 2,004 tubes were loaded, the reactor could reach the required power level and efficiently produce plutonium.^[103][104]

In April 1943, Fermi raised with

Along with Oppenheimer, Compton, and Ernest Lawrence, Fermi was part of the scientific panel that advised the Interim Committee on target selection. The panel agreed with the committee that atomic bombs would be used without warning against an industrial target.^[109] Like others at the Los Alamos Laboratory, Fermi found out about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the public address system in the technical area. Fermi did not believe that atomic bombs would deter nations from starting wars, nor did he think that the time was ripe for world government. He therefore did not join the Association of Los Alamos Scientists.^[110]

Postwar work

Fermi became the Charles H. Swift Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago on 1 July 1945,

The Manhattan Project was replaced by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) on 1 January 1947.^[117] Fermi served on the AEC General Advisory Committee, an influential scientific committee chaired by Robert Oppenheimer.^[118] He also liked to spend a few weeks each year at the Los Alamos National Laboratory,^[119] where he collaborated with Nicholas Metropolis,^[120] and with John von Neumann on Rayleigh–Taylor instability, the science of what occurs at the border between two fluids of different densities.^[121]

After the detonation of the first Soviet

Toward the end of his life, Fermi questioned his faith in society at large to make wise choices about nuclear technology. He said:

Some of you may ask, what is the good of working so hard merely to collect a few facts which will bring no pleasure except to a few long-haired professors who love to collect such things and will be of no use to anybody because only few specialists at best will be able to understand them? In answer to such question[s] I may venture a fairly safe prediction.

The history of science and technology has consistently taught us that scientific advances in basic understanding have sooner or later led to technical and industrial applications that have revolutionized our way of life. It seems to me improbable that this effort to get at the structure of matter should be an exception to this rule. What is less certain, and what we all fervently hope, is that man will soon grow sufficiently adult to make good use of the powers that he acquires over nature.^[133]

Death

Fermi underwent what was called an "exploratory" operation in Billings Memorial Hospital in October 1954, after which he returned home. Fifty days later he died of inoperable stomach cancer in his home in Chicago. He was 53.^[2] Fermi suspected working near the nuclear pile involved great risk but he pressed on because he felt the benefits outweighed the risks to his personal safety. Two of his graduate student assistants working near the pile also died of cancer.^[134]

A memorial service was held at the

Fermi was fond of pointing out that when Alessandro Volta was working in his laboratory, Volta had no idea where the study of electricity would lead.^[148] Fermi is generally remembered for his work on nuclear power and nuclear weapons, especially the creation of the first nuclear reactor, and the development of the first atomic and hydrogen bombs. His scientific work has stood the test of time. This includes his theory of beta decay, his work with non-linear systems, his discovery of the effects of slow neutrons, his study of pion-nucleon collisions, and his Fermi–Dirac statistics. His speculation that a pion was not a fundamental particle pointed the way towards the study of quarks and leptons.^[149]

As a person, Fermi seemed simplicity itself. He was extraordinarily vigorous and loved games and sport. On such occasions his ambitious nature became apparent. He played tennis with considerable ferocity and when climbing mountains acted rather as a guide. One might have called him a benevolent dictator. I remember once at the top of a mountain Fermi got up and said: "Well, it is two minutes to two, let's all leave at two o'clock"; and of course, everybody got up faithfully and obediently. This leadership and self-assurance gave Fermi the name of "The Pope" whose pronouncements were infallible in physics. He once said: "I can calculate anything in physics within a factor 2 on a few sheets; to get the numerical factor in front of the formula right may well take a physicist a year to calculate, but I am not interested in that." His leadership could go so far that it was a danger to the independence of the person working with him. I recollect once, at a party at his house when my wife cut the bread, Fermi came along and said he had a different philosophy on bread-cutting and took the knife out of my wife's hand and proceeded with the job because he was convinced that his own method was superior. But all this did not offend at all, but rather charmed everybody into liking Fermi. He had very few interests outside physics and when he once heard me play on Teller's piano he confessed that his interest in music was restricted to simple tunes.

— Egon Bretscher^[139]

Things named after Fermi

Many things bear Fermi's name. These include the

• Introduzione alla Fisica Atomica (in Italian). Bologna: N.
  OCLC 9653646
  .
• Fisica per i Licei (in Italian). Bologna: N. Zanichelli. 1929.
  OCLC 9653646
  .
• Molecole e cristalli (in Italian). Bologna: N. Zanichelli. 1934.
  OCLC 19918218
  .
• Thermodynamics. New York: Prentice Hall. 1937.
  OCLC 2379038
  .
• Fisica per Istituti Tecnici (in Italian). Bologna: N. Zanichelli. 1938.
• Fisica per Licei Scientifici (in Italian). Bologna: N. Zanichelli. 1938. (with Edoardo Amaldi)
• Elementary particles. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1951.
  OCLC 362513
  .
• Notes on Quantum Mechanics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 1961.
  OCLC 1448078
  .

For a full list of his papers, see pages 75–78 in ref.[139]

Patents

• US Patent 2206634, "Process for the Production of Radioactive Substances", issued July 1940 
• US Patent 2836554, "Air Cooled Neutronic Reactor", issued April 1950 
• US Patent 2524379, "Neutron Velocity Selector", issued October 1950 
• US Patent 2852461, "Neutronic Reactor", issued September 1953 
• US Patent 2708656, "Neutronic Reactor", issued May 1955 
• US Patent 2768134, "Testing Material in a Neutronic Reactor", issued October 1956 
• US Patent 2780595, "Test Exponential Pile", issued February 1957 
• US Patent 2798847, "Method of Operating a Neutronic Reactor", issued July 1957 
• US Patent 2807581, "Neutronic Reactor", issued September 1957 
• US Patent 2807727, "Neutronic Reactor Shield", issued September 1957 
• US Patent 2813070, "Method of Sustaining a Neutronic Chain Reacting System", issued November 1957 
• US Patent 2837477, "Chain Reacting System", issued June 1958 
• US Patent 2931762, "Neutronic Reactor", issued April 1960 
• US Patent 2969307, "Method of Testing Thermal Neutron Fissionable Material for Purity", issued January 1961 

References

Sources

• OCLC 11772127. Archived
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• OCLC 56686431
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• Amaldi, Ugo (2001). "Nuclear Physics from the Nineteen Thirties to the Present Day". In Bernardini, C.; Bonolis, Luisa (eds.). Enrico Fermi: His Work and Legacy. Bologna: Società Italiana di Fisica: Springer. pp. 151–176.
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• Bertotti, Bruno (2001). "Fermi's Coordinates and the Principle of Equivalence". In Bernardini, C.; Bonolis, Luisa (eds.). Enrico Fermi: His Work and Legacy. Bologna: Società Italiana di Fisica: Springer. pp. 115–125.
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• Bonolis, Luisa (2001). "Enrico Fermi's Scientific Work". In Bernardini, C.; Bonolis, Luisa (eds.). Enrico Fermi: His Work and Legacy. Bologna: Società Italiana di Fisica: Springer. pp. 314–394.
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• Cooper, Dan (1999). Enrico Fermi: And the Revolutions in Modern physics. New York: Oxford University Press.
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• Fermi, Enrico (2004). "The Future of Nuclear Physics". In Cronin, J.W (ed.). Fermi Remembered. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  ISBN 978-0-226-12111-6
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• Hawkins, David (1961). Manhattan District History: Project Y – The Los Alamos Project. Volume I: Inception until August 1945. Los Alamos: Los Alamos National Laboratory. LAMS 2532.
• Hoff, Richard (23 January 1978). "Production of Eisteinium and Fermium in Nuclear Explosions". In Seaborg, Glenn T (ed.). Proceedings of the Symposium Commemorating the 25th Anniversary of Elements 99 and 100 (PDF). Los Alamos: Los Alamos National Laboratory. pp. 39–49. Report LBL-7701. Archived (PDF) from the original on 16 September 2011. Retrieved 20 January 2013.
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  (PDF) from the original on 26 September 2019. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
• Hewlett, Richard G.; Duncan, Francis (1969). Atomic Shield, 1947–1952. A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
  OCLC 3717478
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• Holl, Jack M.;
  ISBN 978-0-252-02341-5
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• Hucke, Matt; Bielski, Ursula (1999). Graveyards of Chicago: The People, History, Art, and Lore of Cook County Cemeteries. Chicago: Lake Claremont Press.
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• Jacob, Maurice; Maiani, Luciano (2001). "The Scientific Legacy of Fermi in Particle Physics". In Bernardini, C.; Bonolis, Luisa (eds.). Enrico Fermi: His Work and Legacy. Bologna: Società Italiana di Fisica: Springer. pp. 241–270.
  OCLC 56686431
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• Jones, Eric M. (March 1985). "Where is Everybody?", An Account of Fermi's Question (PDF). Los Alamos:
  OCLC 4434691994. LA-10311-MS. Archived
  (PDF) from the original on 5 November 2015. Retrieved 20 November 2015.
• Jones, Vincent (1985). Manhattan: The Army and the Atomic Bomb. Washington, D.C.: United States Army Center of Military History.
  OCLC 10913875
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• Ricci, Renato Angelo (2001). "Fermi's Last Lessons". In Bernardini, C.; Bonolis, Luisa (eds.). Enrico Fermi: His Work and Legacy. Bologna: Società Italiana di Fisica: Springer. pp. 286–313.
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• Salvini, Giorgio (2001). "Enrico Fermi: His Life and Comment on his Work". In Bernardini, C.; Bonolis, Luisa (eds.). Enrico Fermi: His Work and Legacy. Bologna: Società Italiana di Fisica: Springer. pp. 1–20.
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• Salvetti, Carlo (2001). "The Birth of Nuclear Energy: Fermi's Pile". In Bernardini, C.; Bonolis, Luisa (eds.). Enrico Fermi: His Work and Legacy. Bologna: Società Italiana di Fisica: Springer. pp. 177–203.
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• Schwartz, David N. (2021). L'ultimo uomo che sapeva tutto [The Last Man Who Knew Everything] (in Italian). Milan: Solferino, RCS MediaGroup.
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• Seaborg, Glenn T. (23 January 1978). "Introductory Remarks". In Seaborg, Glenn T (ed.). Proceedings of the Symposium Commemorating the 25th Anniversary of Elements 99 and 100 (PDF). Los Alamos: Los Alamos National Laboratory. pp. 1–3. Report LBL-7701. Archived (PDF) from the original on 16 September 2011. Retrieved 20 January 2013.
• OCLC 118467
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• OCLC 7722354
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• Sullivan, Neil J. (2016). The Prometheus Bomb: The Manhattan Project and Government in the Dark. Lincoln:
  ISBN 978-1-61234-890-2. Archived
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• Von Baeyer, H. C. (1993). The Fermi Solution: Essays on Science. New York: Random House.
  OCLC 27266040
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Further reading

• Bernstein, Barton J. "Four Physicists and the Bomb: The Early Years, 1945-1950" Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences (1988) 18#2; covers Oppenheimer, Fermi, Lawrence and Compton. online
• Galison, Peter, and Barton Bernstein. "In any light: Scientists and the decision to build the Superbomb, 1952–1954." Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 19.2 (1989): 267–347. online

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Enrico Fermi.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Enrico Fermi.

Wikisource has original works by or about:
Enrico Fermi

• "To Fermi – with Love – Part 1". Voices of the Manhattan Project 1971 Radio Segment
• "The First Reactor: 40th Anniversary Commemorative Edition", United States Department of Energy, (December 1982).
• Nobel prize page for the 1938 physics' prize
• The Story of the First Pile
• Enrico Fermi's Case File at The Franklin Institute with information about his contributions to theoretical and experimental physics.
• "Remembering Enrico Fermi". Session J1. APS April Meeting 2010, American Physical Society.
• Time 100: Enrico Fermi by Richard Rhodes 29 March 1999
• Fermi's stay with Ehrenfest in Leiden.