The Pope of Physics

by Gino Segrè

  Afterward, the Fermis left Varenna and went to the Val di Fassa in the Dolomites. The Amaldis had preceded them for a vacation with their children. Enrico Persico, Fermi’s childhood friend in Rome, joined them there. These environs held a special place in the hearts of all of them. This is where young Fermi had first met Laura, still a teenager. It is where on a winter vacation a decade later he had told the Boys about his new theory of the weak interactions, and where Ginestra Amaldi learned of her pregnancy. And it is where, in 1938, Fermi had sent letters to American universities saying he was ready to leave Italy. Now, in middle age, they gathered again: the Fermis, the Amaldis, and Persico.

  First came spirited doubles matches on the tennis court: the Amaldis against Fermi and Persico. The Amaldis were serious tennis players. The Fermis had even sent them a care package right after the war, containing much-appreciated tennis balls.

  The history between Enrico and Edoardo had been meaningful, as was the friendship between their wives. Laura and Ginestra had met as young women, written a book together, and started families at almost the same time. By 1954, Ginestra was a well-known science interpreter and popularizer in the Italian media and had published a well-received book. She was delighted when Laura gave her a copy of the recently released Atoms in the Family.

  The book, a memoir of Laura’s life with Enrico, was admirable in its coverage of her husband’s scientific contributions and their family life, while charming with its light touch and self-deprecating humor. Ginestra was particularly touched by its Italian memories, underlining the extent of the Amaldi-Fermi bonds. It described how Ginestra had organized a celebration for Enrico’s Nobel Prize on the evening of the announcement and how the Amaldis, with Rasetti by their side, had been the last to wave goodbye to the Fermis at the Rome train station in 1938.

  Their children had then all been very young. In the summer of 1954, almost sixteen years later, Amaldi’s son Ugo was about to turn twenty and briefly appeared at the reunion of the families. Following in his father’s footsteps, he was a physics student at the university. Connecting with the group in the Dolomites, he was desperately trying to follow conversations about physics and computers that Fermi, his father, and Persico were having. Similarly, his father, then a little younger than Ugo was now, had strained thirty years earlier to follow conversations about quantum theory between Fermi and his friends.

  The Fermis’ eighteen-year-old son, Judd, still called Giulio in Italy, was also in the Dolomite village, having joined his parents during the summer. Leaving the grown-ups, he went off on a six-day trek around the region’s high peaks with his cousins, Maria’s children, and Ugo Amaldi’s fourteen-year-old brother, Francesco. They slept in mountain refuges and found the excursion a great adventure filled with animated conversations about literature and politics.

  Handsome and a good head taller than his father, Judd would be going off that fall to start his junior year at Oberlin College in Ohio. Exceptionally bright, Judd was studying pure mathematics—a field that dealt with abstract concepts, far removed from math’s more practical tools and techniques. It was not the kind of math favored by his father. Judd distanced himself as much as possible from Enrico’s field and fame.

  Judd’s path through adolescence had been a rocky one, with tendencies toward depression and alienation. From Judd’s viewpoint, his father had been both emotionally and physically absent during his childhood. Laura had hoped the Dolomite setting would bring her son and husband closer together, as well as give a boost to Judd’s relationship with her. Unfortunately, this did not happen with any sustainability.

  Fermi’s European sojourn also included lengthy walks with Persico on the island of Elba, off the southern coast of Tuscany. The two Enricos hiked by themselves, recalling the rambles of their youth, when they shared common dreams and a mutual fascination with all things mechanical.

  Persico described his dear friend on their last walk, “I found in him an old habit, that I think few knew, which perhaps will astonish those who knew him only superficially. Often, in moments of relaxation, walking or stopping to view a beautiful landscape, I would hear him reciting for himself long stretches of classical poetry, that since his youth he had kept in his memory as a rich treasure. With little inclination toward music, poetry took for him the place of song.” Fermi may have seemed tone-deaf to his pianist friend Teller, but to his childhood friend Persico, he was melodious.

  This most private of men seldom revealed himself to others. “Fermi was Fermi,” in the words of his colleague Bob Wilson. But Fermi was also Enrico, a person with a depth of feeling that he rarely showed, even to his children. As his daughter, Nella, commented about her father, “It wasn’t that he lacked emotions, but that he lacked the ability to express them.”

  40

  FAREWELL TO THE NAVIGATOR

  When Enrico and Laura returned to Chicago in September, they were exhilarated by their European journey, having stayed in places that were stunningly beautiful and meaningful to them. They had connected with treasured friends and enjoyed the receptiveness and appreciation showered on one of Italy’s favorite sons. In spite of troubling health issues, Fermi had given an electrifying set of lectures and happily indulged in hikes, tennis games, and swimming.

  Laura’s reentry to the United States was greeted with accolades for Atoms in the Family. The University of Chicago Press had not expected it to be the bestseller that it became. When the New Yorker magazine published two excerpts from it under the title “That Was the Manhattan District—A Domestic View” on successive weeks in July, the book’s popularity was clinched. It launched Laura on a successful writing career that covered such diverse subjects as Mussolini, Galileo, and recent immigrants who had contributed to America’s greatness.

  As soon as Fermi adjusted back to his Chicago routines, he made a doctor’s appointment. Friends had been shocked at how thin and wan Fermi looked. The doctor told him there was nothing to worry about: it was psychological. For someone who was steady and unflappable, it seemed like a strange diagnosis. He chose to ignore any symptoms and, somewhat miraculously, continued a full schedule of lecturing. Concurrently, he fielded an enormous number of requests to accept honors, give guest talks, and participate in various conferences. He meticulously answered each inquiry, politely declining almost all of them.

  It became unavoidable, however, that there was something seriously wrong with his health. Fermi was having more and more troubles with his digestion. In the beginning of October the diagnosis changed: either an esophageal obstruction or stomach cancer was the probable cause of his ailing. Exploratory surgery was scheduled for October 9 at the university’s Billings Hospital. The operation showed that he had a widespread stomach cancer that had already metastasized. There was no hope: Fermi was told that he had only months to live.

  Questions immediately arose as to whether the cancer might have been caused by exposure to radiation at Via Panisperna, Columbia, Chicago, and Los Alamos. It was an understandable reaction, believed by many, since Fermi continued to insist—throughout his career—on carrying out his share, or more, on experimental efforts. When Fermi worked on the synchrocyclotron, younger members of the group were concerned that he had received far greater exposure to radiation in his lifetime than they had. But Fermi was not to be deterred from participating in teamwork. There is no medical evidence, however, that his cumulative exposure led to stomach cancer. None of the other Boys died of cancer, nor did Anderson or Zinn, Fermi’s two constant companions in building the pile. The incidence of Los Alamos scientists dying from cancer is similarly unremarkable.

  As he faced the end, Fermi’s personality remained unchanged, friendly but not effusive, rational in his judgments, often slightly ironic and in control of his emotions in an unforced way. Word spread quickly and many physicists close to Fermi made their way to his bedside to pay homage and say their farewells.

  On the day after the surgery, Fermi was visited in his hospital room by his collaborator the In
dian astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, known as Chandra, and Herb Anderson, who had been with Fermi through thick and thin, from Columbia days to Chicago days, with Los Alamos in between. They braced themselves, knowing that Fermi knew his death was imminent. Sensing they were at a loss for words and aware of Chandra’s Hindu upbringing, Fermi quipped, “Tell me, Chandra, when I die will I come back as an elephant?” The conversation was easy after that.

  When his young colleagues, Murray Gell-Mann and Chen-Ning Yang, visited him, Fermi calmly informed them of his condition and then pointed out by his bedside a notebook on nuclear physics. He hoped to edit it for publication in the time he had left. Yang remembers how “Gell-Mann and I were so overwhelmed by his simple determination and his devotion to physics that we were afraid for a few moments to look into his face.” To another young colleague, Richard Garwin, who visited him, Fermi lamented the relative lack of public policy involvement in his life. This self-critique undoubtedly resonated with Garwin, who went on to have an extraordinarily distinguished career as a presidential adviser on science and security issues in addition to his notable contributions to basic physics.

  Emilio Segrè flew to Chicago as soon as he could. Fermi had been his idol, his guide during all of his adult life. The Pope was infallible; he was smarter, worked harder, was stronger, had better eyesight, and could run faster. Nobody else’s friendship and approval meant as much to him. How was it possible that he could be dying?

  Emilio found Fermi lying in his hospital bed, serene about his fate. He was “being fed artificially. In typical fashion he was measuring the flux of the nutrients by counting drops with a stopwatch. It seemed as if he were performing one of his usual physics experiments on an extraneous object. He was fully aware of the situation and discussed it with Socratic serenity.” To the very end, Fermi was busy calculating.

  There were lighthearted moments in the conversation between the two immigrants. Fermi told Emilio how a Catholic priest, a Protestant pastor, and a Jewish rabbi had separately entered his room, asking for permission to bless him. The Pope added that he had willingly consented to each since “It pleased them and it did not harm me.”

  One of the touching moments recalled by Emilio was Fermi’s pride in his wife’s book. “I hope the book will be successful; it will help distract Laura from her grief for me. It comes at the right moment.” Enrico lived long enough to see Atoms in the Family on the New York Times bestseller list. Ironically, once she was no longer in Fermi’s shadow, Laura became a well-known personality in her own right.

  As the two longtime friends, Segrè and Fermi, neared the end of their visit, Fermi—using a religious turn of phrase of his own—asked Emilio to summon Edward Teller, “adding with a slightly ironical smile, ‘what nobler deed for a dying man than trying to save a soul?’” His view, as expressed to Emilio, was that “the best thing Teller can do now is to shut up and disappear from the public eye for a long time, in the hope that people may forget,” but he still wanted to help his friend. On leaving the hospital room, Segrè was so upset he almost collapsed. He walked alone into a bar and ordered a stiff drink.

  Teller was terribly nervous about visiting Fermi, who he knew had strongly disapproved of his negative testimony at the Oppenheimer hearings. The ensuing hostility of the physics community had been fueled by a July article in Life magazine and a subsequent book by two Time-Life reporters. They depicted Teller as a heroic figure responsible for the hydrogen bomb, having overcome opposition by Oppenheimer and the Los Alamos Laboratory.

  Somewhat contrite about his overblown portrayal, Teller had drafted an article for Science magazine entitled “The Work of Many People.” He had a copy with him and wanted Fermi to read it. After doing so, Fermi encouraged him to publish it, not only for its implicit truth—the bomb was indeed a product of many—but also to make amends. The article appeared in February 1955.

  Stan Ulam, who came to visit the day after Teller, discussed with Fermi the uproar about their mutual colleague. Fermi told him of his attempt to “save a soul.” Ulam was stunned by Fermi’s ability to forgive and his almost superhuman serenity and calm. As the two discussed physics, Fermi offered an evaluation of his own work, telling Ulam he believed he had achieved two thirds of what he hoped to accomplish in his lifetime. His regret was that he could not complete the missing third. Like others, Ulam left the hospital room deeply shaken.

  On November 3, Fermi came home to die. Laura had rented a hospital bed for him and he “told her to rent it only until the end of November because he wouldn’t need it after that.” Leona Woods Marshall, as a family friend as well as Fermi’s collaborator, visited frequently during the next weeks, his last. When she attempted to talk about the two of them writing another paper, Fermi jested that it would have to include a black cross after his name, “directing the reader to a footnote that would say, ‘Care of St. Peter.’” She drove home with “tears streaming down [her] face.”

  Everyone commented on how strong and dignified Laura was throughout the ordeal. Clearly, the marriage between her and Enrico had been a happy one, although being the wife of a physicist was not always easy. In her life with Fermi, she had assumed the position of a supportive, loving wife. This was reflected in her comments years later:

  Some physicists’ wives believe that their husbands like physics better than they do their wives. And they may have a point. After work in the evening, when a wife is expecting a word of endearment like “I couldn’t live without you,” the husband is most likely utterly silent, absorbed in scribbling numbers and symbols on the margins of the evening paper. When she would like to go to the movies, he has a date with an experiment that cannot wait. There are other complaints, some more justified than others.

  Laura’s concluding line, “But all in all, life with a physicist is well worth living,” understated the complications of that life and her love for Enrico.

  In the years that they had been married, Laura gradually changed more than Enrico. As Bob Wilson had noted, “Fermi was always Fermi.” In contrast, Laura was not always Laura. She began life as a conventional middle-class Roman and then, particularly after Enrico’s death, shifted her sights.

  She had played out her role as the wife of Fermi and mother of their children. Now she entered the arena of political activism. Less than a year after Enrico’s death, she attended in Geneva the first International Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy (August 1955), appointed to write an official account of American contributions to planning and procedures of the meeting. The conference steered her toward being a peace activist. Laura would also make her mark—well ahead of the times—on environmental issues and handgun control. Felled in 1977 by a chronic case of pulmonary fibrosis, Laura died with the wedding ring Enrico had given her in 1928 still on her hand.

  According to her admiring granddaughter Olivia, Laura had tried to make the world a better place, looking to the future rather than dwelling on the past. The past had entailed some heartache for her. Nella and Judd, in different ways, had struggled with being the children of someone famous. This phenomenon is well documented with examples through time of how the stardom of a famous parent impacts his or her offspring. Nella and Judd were no exception. They had experienced the toll of many moves, a secret and sequestered life, and the gradual revelation that their father played a key role in developing a weapon capable of wiping out thousands of innocent lives. But perhaps most hurtful was seeing their father idolized by his students with whom he spent more time than with them. And Fermi seemed to enjoy talking physics with his followers more than he did playing a parental role with his own children. While young physicists may have been reconciled to Fermi’s standard lack of praise, that trait must have been hard on Nella and Judd.

  As children of a genius, both Nella and Judd felt high expectations laid on them. As adults, they were reluctant to talk about their father, even to their respective spouses or their own children. Judd harbored regrets about becoming a scientist because of
obvious comparisons to his father. After earning a Ph.D. in molecular biology in Berkeley and several subsequent career moves, he settled down in England, where he once again took up molecular biology, working on Cambridge’s distinguished Medical Research Council. According to his widow, Sarah, Judd was distant from both his parents.

  Nella’s relationship with her parents was less fraught, in part because—as she stated—less was expected of her because of her gender. In later years, Nella recounted that her father could approach her only on an intellectual level, for instance by teaching her algebra. Wisely, she had selected an entirely different field than her father’s, one of which he had limited understanding or even appreciation. Her passion was for art, and she taught for thirty years at the University of Chicago’s Laboratory School, the same school she and Judd had attended. She was close to her mother, undoubtedly reinforced by their proximity in Hyde Park and by Laura’s frequent babysitting of Nella’s two children. After her mother’s death, Nella earned a doctorate in educational psychology from the University of Chicago at age fifty, a feat she was justifiably proud of. She had done what her father long ago had instructed her to do: “Earn a Ph.D., just in case.” By this time, Nella had divorced, and the Ph.D. offered a sense of security, although she never seemed to overcome a certain awkwardness and lack of comfort with herself.

  Throughout his dying days, Fermi was clear-headed. Laura was especially grateful for that when on November 16 he became the first recipient of a new prize instituted by the Atomic Energy Commission. Carrying an award of $25,000, the honor was to “recognize career contributions to science, technology and medicine related to nuclear energy.” Fermi’s letter thanking the AEC was the last he would write. Two years later the prize was renamed the Enrico Fermi Award.