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Portrait of Enrico Fermi

Science · Physics

Enrico Fermi

1901–1954 · Italian-American

Nuclear and particle physics

Enrico Fermi was an Italian physicist, equally brilliant in theory and experiment, who won the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on nuclear reactions induced by slow neutrons. Emigrating to the United States, he built Chicago Pile-1, which achieved the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in December 1942. His theory of beta decay, the particles called fermions and element 100, fermium, all carry his legacy.

How to spot them

  • ▸Chicago Pile-1: first controlled nuclear chain reaction, 2 December 1942, beneath the stands of Stagg Field
  • ▸Theory of beta decay; named the neutrino
  • ▸The Fermi paradox: 'Where is everybody?'
  • ▸Fermions, fermium, Fermilab and the fermi unit of length
  • ▸Coded message: 'The Italian navigator has landed in the new world'

Key discoveries & works

Theory of beta decay (1933–34)

Introduced the weak interaction; gave the neutrino its name ('little neutral one')

Nuclear reactions induced by slow neutrons (1934)

Found that slowing neutrons with paraffin or water greatly increases their effect

Chicago Pile-1 (1942)

The world's first nuclear reactor to achieve a self-sustaining chain reaction

'Where is everybody?' paradox about alien civilisations (1950)

Lunchtime question at Los Alamos about the absence of evidence for extraterrestrial life

Key ideas

  • Fermi problems: rough order-of-magnitude estimates, such as the number of piano tuners in Chicago
  • Particles with half-integer spin, which obey the Pauli exclusion principle, are called fermions after him

Quick-fire facts

  • •Nobel Prize in Physics 1938 for demonstrating new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation and for discovering nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons
  • •Used the trip to Stockholm to collect his Nobel Prize to emigrate to the US, as Mussolini's racial laws threatened his Jewish wife, Laura
  • •Led the 'Via Panisperna boys' research group in Rome, named after the street of their institute
  • •After Chicago Pile-1 went critical, Arthur Compton phoned the news with the code 'The Italian navigator has landed in the new world'
  • •Element 100, fermium, and Fermilab (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory) near Chicago are named after him
  • •The fermi is an informal name for the femtometre (10⁻¹⁵ m)
  • •Died of stomach cancer in Chicago in 1954, aged 53

Drill it — 8 cards

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Sources