The Pope of Physics
Page 37
A drawing of the first atomic pile in the squash courts under Stagg Field, University of Chicago, December 2, 1942.
University of Chicago gathering on the fourth anniversary of the first pile experiment, with many of the key physicists present. Front row, left to right: Enrico Fermi, Walter Zinn, Albert Wattenberg, and Herbert Anderson. Middle row, left to right: Harold Agnew, William Sturm, Harold Lichtenberger, Leona Woods Marshall, and Leo Szilard. Back row, left to right: Norman Hilberry, Samuel Allison, Thomas Brill, Robert Nobles, Warren Nyer, and Marvin Wilkening. December 2, 1946.
The Los Alamos main gate to the secret city (around 1944). All residents of the Atomic City were required to have entry badges. The original gate was torn down in 1947 and replaced by a modern one. The city became open (no longer gated) in 1957.
A Los Alamos laboratory lecture: (left to right) Norris Bradbury, John Manley, Fermi, and Jerome Kellogg in the front row; J. Robert Oppenheimer and Richard Feynman are visible in the second row. 1944.
Explosion of first atomic bomb 0.053 seconds after detonation. Trinity, New Mexico, July 16, 1945.
Fermi and Emilio Segrè, his first graduate student and life-long colleague who edited Fermi’s complete works. This photo was taken a week after the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. August 15, 1945.
Fermi, whose brilliance as a teacher was much heralded by undergraduate and graduate physics students, at the University of Chicago in the 1950s.
Enrico and Laura in 1953, he with his legendary slide rule and she with a page from her forthcoming book, Atoms in the Family.
A family vacation in the Dolomites with dear friends: (from left circling to right) Enrico Fermi, Giulio (Judd) Fermi, Ginestra Amaldi, Laura Fermi, Edoardo Amaldi, Ugo Amaldi. August 1954.
The obelisk at Trinity, the remote test site in the New Mexico desert where the world’s first nuclear bomb was exploded on July 16, 1945.
The monument Nuclear Energy by sculptor Henry Moore at the University of Chicago, dedicated to the memory of Fermi’s experiment that introduced the first controlled generation of nuclear power.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
GINO SEGRÈ’S previous books include A Matter of Degrees, Faust in Copenhagen, and Ordinary Geniuses. A graduate of Harvard College, he earned his Ph.D. at MIT and is now an emeritus professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania. He has received numerous honors, including awards from the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the John S. Guggenheim Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Energy. Segrè was born in Florence, Italy. You can sign up for email updates here.
BETTINA HOERLIN taught health care disparities at the University of Pennsylvania for sixteen years. She also has been a visiting lecturer at Haverford College and Oxford University. Her career in health policy and administration included serving as health commissioner of Philadelphia. The author of Steps of Courage: My Parents’ Journey from Nazi Germany to America, she grew up in the Atomic City of Los Alamos. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Prologue: Trinity
PART 1: ITALY, BEGINNINGS
1. Family Roots
2. The Little Match (Il Piccolo Fiammifero)
3. Leaning In: Physics and Pisa
4. Student Days
5. The Young Protégé
6. The Summer of 1924
7. Florence
8. Quantum Leaps
9. Enrico and Laura
PART 2: PASSAGES
10. The Boys of Via Panisperna
11. The Royal Academy
12. Crossing the Atlantic
13. Bombarding the Nucleus
14. Decay
15. The Neutron Comes to Rome
16. The Rise and Fall of the Boys
17. Transitions
18. Stockholm Calls
PART 3: HELLO, AMERICA
19. Fission
20. News Travels
21. Chain Reaction
22. The Race Begins
23. New Americans
24. The Sleeping Giant
25. Chicago Bound
26. Critical Pile (CP-1)
27. The Day the Atomic Age Was Born
PART 4: THE ATOMIC CITY
28. The Manhattan Project: A Three-Legged Stool
29. Signor Fermi Becomes Mister Farmer
30. Götterdämmerung
31. The Hill
32. “No Acceptable Alternative”
33. Aftershock
34. Goodbye, Mr. Farmer
PART 5: HOME
35. Physicist with a Capital F
36. The Fermi Method
37. The Super
38. Circling Back
39. Last Gift to Italy (Ultimo Regalo all’Italia)
40. Farewell to the Navigator
Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Photos
About the Authors
Copyright
THE POPE OF PHYSICS. Copyright © 2016 by Gino Segrè and Bettina Hoerlin. All rights reserved. For information, address Henry Holt and Co.,
175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.henryholt.com
Cover design by David Shoemaker
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Segrè, Gino, author.|Hoerlin, Bettina, 1939 – author.
Title: The Pope of Physics: Enrico Fermi and the birth of the atomic age / Gino Segrè and Bettina Hoerlin.
Description: First edition.|New York: Henry Holt and Company, [2016]|Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016013398|ISBN 9781627790055|ISBN 1627790055|ISBN 9781627790062|ISBN 1627790063
Subjects: LCSH: Fermi, Enrico, 1901–1954.|Physicists—Italy—Biography.|Physicists—United States—Biography.
Classification: LCC QC16.F46 S44 2016|DDC 530.092 [B]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016013398
e-ISBN 9781627790062
First Edition: November 2016
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