Segrè notes that Fermi paid a great deal of attention to his career during this period and seemed obsessed, at least in his letters to Persico, with the mechanics of the concorso process and his ability to prevail and beat the competition. He also notes, with barely disguised bitterness, that Fermi did not recall his own struggles to achieve his career objectives:
That Fermi had been intensely interested in his formal career may come as a surprise to those who knew him in his later years. I remember that as early as 1930, or shortly thereafter, he showed little interest in his friends’ and collaborators’ problems of academic advancement. He was of course right in giving overriding priority to scientific achievement and to favorable working conditions over career questions; nevertheless, he seems to have forgotten very early the way he himself felt in his youth.
Perhaps Segrè was correct in his interpretation of Fermi’s reluctance to intervene on behalf of the careers of more junior colleagues. Perhaps it reflects, as Amaldi once suggested, that Fermi believed the world of physics was a tough one, and one needed to be tough to survive in it. His behavior may have been his way of preparing his younger colleagues. It is also possible, however, that as Fermi became acutely aware of his growing power and influence within Italian academic circles he felt that any intervention he might make would give the recipient an unfair advantage. Fairness, rather than insensitivity, may have been his top priority. In any case, as Segrè acknowledges, this changed noticeably in his later years.
IN THE REPORT OF THE ROME CONCORSO COMMITTEE, PUBLISHED in November 1926, Fermi receives fulsome praise, but one particular sentence, crafted by Corbino and expressing his hopes for his young colleague, stands out: “he moves with complete assurance in the most difficult questions of modern theoretical physics, in such a way that he is the best-prepared and most worthy person to represent our country in the field of intense scientific activity that ranges the entire world.” This was Corbino’s dream and he had used his considerable influence and political savvy to make it possible. He happened to be right. Fermi was indeed a unique figure, someone who had demonstrated that he could fulfill the Corbino plan and probably the only one who could do so. Now, with all the expectations of Corbino and his colleagues resting on his shoulders, Fermi had to deliver.
PART TWO
THE ROME YEARS
CHAPTER SIX
FAMILY LIFE
THE YEARS FERMI SPENT IN ROME—1926 THROUGH 1938—WERE some of the most important years, personally and professionally, of his entire life. He married and had two children. He developed, with the help of his mentor Corbino, a major international center for physics education and research, attracting not only the best minds in Italy but also major young physicists from other European centers of excellence. He organized two major international physics conferences, which put Italy on the physics map. As a theorist, he championed Dirac’s quantum field theories to the broader physics world and used those theories to develop the first theoretical explanation of beta decay. Finally, during these years he discovered induced radioactivity through slow-neutron bombardment. In the process he became—reluctantly, but inexorably—a celebrity of the fascist regime.
FERMI ARRIVED BACK IN ROME IN EARLY 1926 AND TOOK UP RESIDENCE with his father and sister in their new home in Città Giardino Aniene at Via Monginevra 12. Alberto and Maria had moved in just a few months before to a house built to Alberto’s specifications, more comfortable than the cramped apartment on Via Principe Umberto where the family had lived since 1908. Città Giardino Aniene was what the British would call a “garden suburb,” a development within the Roman metropolis where each house had its own plot of land with a private backyard. It was, in its time, suburban living at its finest, a little over four miles from Fermi’s new offices at Via Panisperna. Fermi would walk or bike to work, or sometimes take public transport part of the way. He had not yet bought his first car.
On Saturdays, Fermi returned to the vibrant salon of the great Italian mathematician Guido Castelnuovo. He had attended briefly in the year prior to his assignment to Florence. Now he was far better known to the eminent mathematicians who joined Castelnuovo every Saturday, including Vito Volterra, Tullio Levi-Civita, Federigo Enriques, and Ugo Amaldi, who brought along his son Edoardo, just eighteen years old. These were some of the greatest mathematicians of their generation, and they understood the potential Fermi had to revolutionize Italian physics. They welcomed him—all the more so because of his new work on quantum statistical mechanics.
At these salons, Fermi would spend part of his time with the older gentlemen discussing developments in math and physics. There was much to discuss, especially now that the logjam in quantum physics had given way to major breakthroughs. He would also pull away from the adults and enjoy the company of the youngsters who amused themselves in a separate room. There he joined a small circle of social friends, including Edoardo Amaldi and Castelnuovo’s attractive daughter, Gina. Persico, for the time being lecturing at the University of Rome, also attended the salons and soon was part of the group of young people. Eventually, Emilio Segrè joined them, as well. One other friend admitted later to the ring was a fabulously beautiful young woman named Ginestra Giovene, a Roman who started taking classes in physics at Via Panisperna. In short order she would become Edoardo Amaldi’s wife.
On Saturdays they would enjoy themselves at the salon, while the older people spoke of more serious things. Fermi would invent silly games, one of which, “fleas,” consisted of making small coins bounce across a felt-covered table. Fermi would also play “director” and pretend to direct the others in an imaginary movie. They would often meet up the next day as a group, with Fermi in the lead, setting out on hikes and climbs in the parks and hills that surrounded Rome. Among the group was a young woman Fermi had met a few years before, the daughter of prominent Italian admiral Augusto Capon. Her name was Laura.
Laura Capon had grown into a young woman since the day Fermi had met her just prior to his Florence assignment. In 1924 she was only sixteen years old, and they met once more briefly during the summer of 1925. By the time Fermi began to notice her, at these salons and on numerous group hikes and outdoor adventures, she had become a lovely woman of eighteen years. She was slim and attractive, gifted with a sharp mind and an equally sharp tongue. In Laura Capon, Enrico Fermi had met his match.
During her time as a science student at the University of Rome, she had taken courses in math and physics with Persico. Indeed, she writes that it was the thought of seeing the handsome, blond Persico in a social setting that made her persuade her father to accept the open invitation to attend the Castelnuovos’ Saturday salons. Laura would sometimes bring her sister Anna to these gatherings. Anna, an artist with little patience or interest in her sister’s science-obsessed friends, dismissively dubbed them “the logarithms,” a name that stuck. The friendships Laura developed with Persico, Amaldi, Ginestra, Gina Castelnuovo, and the others were completely independent of the connection to Fermi, and they lasted her entire life, well beyond Fermi’s death.
The reticence Fermi showed in every aspect of his personal life prevents us from following their courtship from his point of view. He wrote neither letters nor diaries that narrate the development of their relationship. The only written accounts are Laura’s, and they do not provide a detailed picture either. What we do know is that the two drew closer during these outings. Fermi must have found her personality attractive, and she was quite pretty. She also came from a well-to-do family, with greater resources than Fermi’s own family. For her part, she clearly understood how gifted he was and also admired his charisma and outgoing personality.
What she didn’t appreciate, however, was his tendency to tease her, especially in the presence of his old friend Rasetti, who took up a position at Via Panisperna as a professor of experimental physics not long after Fermi arrived. On outings and road trips, the two of them would gang up on her mercilessly, testing her on all sorts of trivia and ridiculing her when she got a
n answer wrong. On one occasion they grilled her on the name of a shell they found on the beach at Ostia, a favorite summer destination of the group. Another time they quizzed her on geography: what is the capital of Afghanistan? When she could not answer correctly, they collapsed in laughter. They would also gang up on the others, including the young Segrè. The two of them would feed off each other, but it appears that Rasetti was usually the instigator.
Laura recounts one particular question Fermi posed and then solved himself. It is perhaps the earliest account of what has come to be known as a Fermi problem—a problem of seemingly insurmountable complexity that can be answered to within an acceptable degree of accuracy by making some simple, reasonable assumptions. On one excursion the group came upon an anthill:
We could see nothing of interest, only a common anthill.
“How many cerebral cells work at building this mound? Would you say that ant brains yield more or less work than human brains per unit of cerebral matter?” Enrico would pull out of his pocket the small slide rule that never left him. “Let’s see… in a cubic centimeter of neurons…” In a short while he would raise his triumphant eyes on us. “I have figured the answers. And you?”
Fermi had the analytical skills to figure out almost anything by himself. Rasetti had a seemingly inexhaustible base of factual knowledge on a vast range of subjects. Together, they were more than intimidating and could give anyone an inferiority complex. Laura was up to the challenge. At one point, after a few years of humiliation, she and Ginestra, by now a close friend, resolved to gain the upper hand in these inquisitions and mastered the entry for the old Egyptian city of Alexandria in the Enciclopedia Italiana. That Sunday they grilled Fermi and Rasetti on the topic and silenced them, for the first and only time.
It was during the summer of 1925, when Fermi vacationed with other members of the Castelnuovo salon and spent a brief time with Laura, that he confided to her, in a matter-of-fact way, that he grouped people into four categories of intelligence: lower than average, average, intelligent, and exceptional. Laura describes how she gave back as good as she got, teasing Fermi:
“You mean to say,” I commented, assuming the most serious expression I could manage, “that in class four there is one person only, Enrico Fermi.”
“You are being mean to me, Miss Capon. You know very well that I place many people in class four,” Fermi retorted with apparent resentment; then he added on second thought: “I couldn’t place myself in class three. It wouldn’t be fair.… Class four is not so exclusive as you make it. You also belong in it.”
He might have been sincere at the time, but later he must have demoted me to class three. Be that as it may, I have always liked to have the last word in any argument and so I said with some finality: “If I am in class four, then there must be a class five in which you and you alone belong.” To everyone except Fermi, my definition became a dogma.
This exchange, so early in their courtship, reveals what they found so attractive in each other. She knew he was uniquely brilliant and admired him for it, even as she teased him about it. He understood that she, too, was quite intelligent and difficult to intimidate. Only over time did his constant teasing wear her down. Nevertheless, they must have found a deep mutual compatibility because by 1928 they were married.
Sadly, Alberto did not live to see the couple wed. He had been ailing since Ida’s death in 1924, and he died in May 1927, his children at his side. For the next twelve months, the two siblings shared the home in Città Giardino.
Enrico appears not to have expressed any outward grief. None of his early biographers mention it and no letters or diaries exist that allow us to pull back the curtain on what must have been a traumatic moment in Fermi’s life. It is completely consistent, of course, with the universal view of those who knew him that he rarely if ever expressed personal feelings. He was still in the grip of the moment when, at the age of two, he broke down in tears at the first sight of his family and his mother scolded him for it.
THAT SUMMER FERMI BOUGHT A CAR.
Generally frugal, he chose the cheapest model Peugeot, a “bébé” Peugeot, a yellow two-seat convertible that looked as silly as it was cheap. He had grandly announced to his friends that soon he would be either getting married or buying a car. Alarmed when she heard the news about the Peugeot, Laura’s sister Cornelia wrote to Laura, who was spending the last weeks of summer at her uncle’s Tuscan country villa. Everyone in their circle must have known that Laura and Enrico were interested in each other, and Cornelia wanted Laura to hear directly from her as soon as possible the presumably bad news, that Fermi had chosen car over wife, before she found out from someone else. Laura claims to have been pleased by the news and assured her other sister Anna, who was with her at the villa, that she had decided to become a professional woman and had no interest in marriage. Besides, Fermi had described his ideal wife to her and she bore no resemblance to that ideal: “He wanted a tall, strong girl of athletic type, and blonde if possible; she must come from sturdy country stock, be nonreligious, and her four grandparents must be alive.” Laura put this down to Fermi’s belief in eugenics, common at the time, as well as his love of sports and his general skepticism when it came to matters metaphysical. It appears to have crossed neither her mind nor anyone else’s that his description of the ideal wife might have been meant to distract Laura from discovering just how interested he was in her or that he bought the car specifically to help woo her. Soon he was taking her, along with other “logarithms,” out for drives in the countryside, often accompanied by Rasetti, who had his own car and could be relied upon to give Fermi a hand when his car broke down, as it often did. For Fermi, driving became a lifelong passion.
Over the next few years, well after their marriage, the car became a character in the Fermi story. Its egg-yolk-yellow color, its dense trailing cloud of black exhaust fumes, and its faintly ridiculous shape made it a sort of minor celebrity on the streets of Rome. Often after a movie or dinner, Laura and Enrico would return to the parked car only to find an amusing (or insulting) note left behind on the windshield or seat.
WE DO NOT KNOW WHEN FERMI PROPOSED—IT WAS PROBABLY IN late 1927—but propose he did. Laura was quick to accept, and the civil ceremony was set for July 28, 1928. In Rome, civil weddings were held in the city hall atop the ancient Campidoglio, or Capitoline Hill, the legendary site of Romulus’s founding of the city. According to Laura, it was a very hot day in Rome—104 degrees in the shade, in the days before air conditioning. The wedding party was supposed to meet at the spacious Capon residence at Via dei Villini 33 and head downtown from there by car. At the appointed hour, all except the groom had arrived. It wasn’t a case of nerves that delayed Fermi. The suit he had ordered arrived with about three inches to spare in the sleeves and trousers and, always one to do his own handiwork, Fermi told his sister to go on while he adjusted them to the proper length. Maria brought word to the group that the groom was suffering not from cold feet but from short arms. Everyone was relieved. Soon the groom himself arrived and the group made their way up to the Campidoglio.
FIGURE 6.1. Laura and Enrico in their “Bébé Peugeot.” Courtesy of Rachel Fermi.
The ceremony was short, and soon afterward the wedding party spilled out into the plaza for a group photo. It is a wonderful photo—so wonderful, in fact, that Fermi’s Argonne lab colleagues chose it as the cover of the tribute record album To Fermi with Love, produced after his death. The newlyweds are at the center, Fermi grinning from ear to ear, Laura smiling more demurely under a round-topped hat. Sharing center stage with them are Laura’s father, in full ceremonial uniform; Senator Corbino, the closest thing to a father figure for Fermi since his own father passed away a year earlier; Maria, Laura’s sisters, and various other relatives; and, at the back, his head rising ostrich-like above the rest of the group, Fermi’s old friend Franco Rasetti. The joy of the occasion is obvious, despite the sweltering midday heat.
FIGURE 6.2. Enrico and Laura’s we
dding party, 1928. Laura’s father, Admiral Capon, is at center, next to Enrico. Laura is to Enrico’s right. Corbino is seen just behind the admiral’s left shoulder, and at the back, peeking over Corbino’s left shoulder, is Rasetti. Courtesy of Rachel Fermi.
THE NEWLYWEDS TOOK THEIR HONEYMOON AT A MOUNTAIN INN nestled in the village of Champoluc in the Italian Alps, ten miles due south of the Matterhorn. The flight from Rome to Genoa, in a Dornier sea plane operated by Italy’s fledgling commercial air transport system, was Laura’s first. She was apparently terrified but was proud to have hidden it from her new husband. From Genoa they took a train into the mountains.
Settled in their hotel, the couple spent part of their time hiking and exploring the magnificent landscape of the Val D’Aosta, one of Italy’s most beautiful alpine valleys. Naturally, Enrico decided that this was the right time to teach Laura electromagnetic theory. A student of general science at the University of Rome, she had a good understanding of basic physics. Incapable of not teaching—it was perhaps his principal mode of communication—Fermi resolved to use the honeymoon to teach his new wife Maxwell’s famous equations on the electromagnetic field. She was patient and, to her credit, a willing and able student. She was also unafraid to poke holes in her husband’s explanations when she saw them. She knew he was one of the most brilliant men in his field, but that didn’t stop her from challenging him when she thought he was wrong:
The Last Man Who Knew Everything Page 9
