Enrico Fermi

by K.M.

..

The Start of Fermi's Life

Fermi was born on September 29, 1901 in Rome and he died on November 28, 1954 in Chicago. His parents were Alberto Fermi and Ida De Gattis, and they met and lived in Rome. In Enrico's youth, he was the youngest of three children; Maria was his sister, while Giulio was his brother. In the first two years of his life, he was raised by an assistant nurse because his mother and father could not care for his brother, sister and himself at the same time. When he returned from his nurse, he feared the new people he saw, but he eventually became used to them after strict rules and the company of his brother and sister.

The Death of a Brother

When Enrico was 14, his brother Giulio became sick. His parents took him to a doctor, and they told them that he had a throat abscess. They were told that he needed surgery, but it would be easy and there would be no worries. However, while Giulio was receiving anesthesia, he died from unknown causes. When news of Giulio's death was heard at home, everyone was hurt, but Enrico was the most affected. They were best friends, and they did more things together then anyone else. His mother, however, never accepted her loss of her son. Giulio was the favorite of the two sons, and her only outlet was for her to keep crying. She was depressed, and when she was around other family members, she would make them depressed, even with her knowing that she should stop. Enrico coped with the loss a different way, however. He went to the hospital where his brother died and confronted his fears by going into the hospital.

Fermi in School

After he finally came to terms with his loss, the activity he concerned himself with was to study. He still participated in team sports and other activities, but studying mostly took up his time. He studied a range of topics, but he first learned mathematics, then physics. In second grade, he had to write a paper with something to do with iron. "On his way to school, he passed by a store with sign that said 'Factory of iron beds.' He wrote, 'With iron one makes some beds'" (Fermi 16). Even though it was acceptable, his mother and teacher were not happy with that, and they had ideas about his true intelligence, but the problem of his studies was that he could not find enough books to study from, and sometimes his brother's death affected his work in the future.

New Friendships

After his brother's death, it was hard for Enrico to find friends. He only thought of the people he was playing with as "accomplices," not friends, but it was not long until he found a new person to be with and turn into a friend. His name was Enrico Persico, and he was as interested in science as Fermi was. Because of this, they became partners in sharing books and sharing knowledge, as later explained by his Fermi's wife. "Maria [his sister] was often interrupted in her studies by her brother's increasingly excited remarks about the book . . ." (Fermi 19). As Fermi and Persico grew older, they began to want more knowledge and created problems with everyday things. The more strange idea, though, was that the two boys, with every problem they created, they tried to explain. They were able to explain all of the problems until they came upon trying to explain a top's spinning:

That it should spin faster the more violently they pulled away the string wound around it seemed intuitively logical. But they saw no reason why a fast-spinning top should keep its axis vertical or even straighten it up, if it had not been vertical at the start. (Fermi 19)

Fun at School

When Fermi was seventeen, he left his family to go to Pisa to study and continue his education at the Scuola Normale, which gave him free room and board and free education. Fermi did many things with his time, such as play-fighting with his friends, and to embarrass the most unattractive girl for "May Queen." He also was part of the "Anti-Neighbors Society," which was created by his friend, Franco Rasetti. The only goal of this group was to pester and disturb other people, and the group members were not immune to the other people's pranks.

On a certain spring morning Fermi, who always awoke very early, found himself all clothed when other students were still sound asleep. . . In front of Radetti's house he produced . . . two screwing eyelets, fastened one in the front door, the other in the doorway, and snapped a padlock through them . . . took great delight seeing him a prisoner locked in his own home. (Fermi 24)

Continuing His Education

After all of Fermi's fun, however, he began to study and work even harder. In July 1922, Fermi earned his Doctorate in Physics. When he was required to give an oral speech about the topic he chose, he obtained his degree Magna Cum Laude, but none of the examiners shook his hand or congratulated him because of his knowledge, and the failure of the board members to follow along, but Robert Oppenheimer sketched him as:

[Having ] passion for clarity. He was simply unable to let things be foggy. Since they always are, this kept him pretty active. (Rhodes 1)

Family Life

After that, he went back to his home in Rome, and on October 28, Fermi met his wife. While they met, Italy was under siege from fascist forces such as Mussolini. Fermi was told to leave because his wife was going to be persecuted because she was Jewish, but he did not leave until sixteen years later, but his wife evaded the forces and survived. On July 19, 1928, Enrico Fermi was married to Laura Capon. They had two children, Nella and Giulio; Nella born on January 31, 1931, and Giulio born on February 16, 1936. Enrico was a family man, who loved his children and had great fun with them, and he loved to do his favorite things with them. "His favorite pastimes were walking, mountaineering, and wintersports" (Nobel e-museum 3).

Further Research

Meanwhile, he continued his research in physics and science. His research eventually led to him discovering the statistical laws in 1926, now known as the Fermi statistics. One year later, he was professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Rome, and stayed there until 1938. In this year, he received a Nobel Prize in physics and left Rome to go to America. When he arrived in America, his first job was Professor of Physics at Columbia University. While he was teaching here, he received word that two people had discovered fission by experiments dealing with bombarding a certain element with the neutron. After he heard about this, he thought about creating the same reaction with something else, uranium. With further experimentation and enthusiasm from his partners, he discovered that he could recreate the reaction and that he could also control it. Thus, on December 2, 1942, on a squash court at the University of Chicago, the "pile," as he called it, was created. The "pile" is now known as a nuclear reactor in modern times, later on, during World War Two, Fermi and his research team helped indirectly to develop the atomic bomb. For the first modern use, it was put onto the 1955 U. S. S. Nautilus as a prototype power plant.

The End of an Era

On October 9, he went to Billings Memorial Hospital for "exploratory surgery," which was to try to cure the stomach cancer he had, which was most likely caused by the radiation from his experiments. He died on November 28, 1954, while he was 53. On November 16, he was given $25,000 for his creation of the "pile." He received honorary degrees from the Universities of Utrecht, Heidelberg, Columbia, Yale, Washington, and Rockford College (NY Times 4). In 1947, he won Franklin medal of Franklin Institute, and in 1950 he received the Barnard Medal from Columbia University. All of these achievements gave Enrico Fermi and his family all the recognition they could ever want. One of his numerous standouts is on the plaque on the wall at the University of Chicago:

On December 2, 1942
Man Achieved Here
The First Self-Sustaining Chain Reaction
And Thereby Initiates The
Controlled Release Of Nuclear Energy

This is a fitting memorial of a man who helped the world start the Atomic Era.

List of Works Cited

This webpage created by K.M. for History and Thought of Western Man, Rich East High School. Last update, 27 May 2003.

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