Enrico Fermi

Italian-American physicist who, with Leo Szilard, discovered uranium fission. In 1942, he invented the atomic reactor. Fermi designed the first atomic piles and produced the first nuclear chain reaction in 1942, and later worked on the Atomic Project in Los Alamos.

Born in Rome, he was the son of the chief inspector of Italy's railways. He was a child prodigy in mathematics and physics Receiving his doctorate at age 21, he studied physics at the University of Göttingen in Germany, taught math at the University of Florence and became professor of theoretical physics at the University of Rome in 1926.

He developed statistics to explain the behavior of electrons and a theory of beta decay. In 1938 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the production of artificial radioactivity and was allowed to receive the prize by Mussolini at the award ceremony in Sweden.

Fearing for the safety of his family, instead of returning to Italy, Fermi went to the U.S. with his wife and children and settled in Leonia, New Jersey. He taught at Columbia University until 1942 when he moved to the University of Chicago to became a key scientist in the Manhattan Project. At the University of Chicago, Fermi created the first controlled nuclear fission chain reaction. The remainder of the war years he worked on the atomic bomb. He later opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb on ethical grounds.

He married Laura Capon, daughter of a Jewish captain in the Italian navy. They had a daughter, Nella, and a son, Giulio. Laura died in 1977.

Fermi died of cancer on 28 November 1954 in Chicago, IL.