Franco Rasetti

Italian scientist, who, together with Enrico Fermi, discovered key processes leading to nuclear fission. Rasetti refused to work on the Manhattan Project, however, on moral grounds.

In 1930, he was appointed to the chair in spectroscopy at the Physics Institute of the University of Rome, at that time still located in Via Panisperna. His colleagues included Oscar D'Agostino, Emilio Segrè, Edoardo Amaldi, Ettore Majorana and Enrico Fermi, as well as the institute's director Orso Mario Corbino. Rasetti remained in this post until 1938.

Rasetti was one of Fermi's main colloaborators in the study of neutrons and neutron-induced radioactivity. In 1934, he participated in the discovery of the artificial radioactivity of fluorine and aluminium which would be critical in the development of the atomic bomb.

In 1939 the advance of fascism and the deteriorating Italian political situation led him to leave Italy, following the example of his colleagues Fermi, Segré and Bruno Pontecorvo. With Fermi he had discovered the key to nuclear fission, but contrary to many of his colleagues, he refused for moral reasons to work on the Manhattan project.

In 1947, he moved to the United States where he became a naturalized citizen in 1952. Until 1967, he held a chair in physics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

He died on 5 December 2001, aged 100, in Waremme, Belgium.