Enrico Fermi's Centenary

10 October 2001

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Enrico Fermi - who is commonly credited as being one of the last physicists to be influential in both experimental and theoretical physicists - was born a century ago, on 29 September 1901. He died a little more than 53 years later on 29 November 1954. Fermi's long list of achievements includes his theory of beta decay, which incorporated Pauli's radical suggestion of a new particle (the neutrino). He was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of new chemical elements through neutron irradiation and work with slow neutrons. He took the opportunity to leave Italy with his wife (who was Jewish) when he went to Sweden to receive his prize, and settled in the US, where he led the team that produced the first nuclear fission chain reaction in December 1942 (commemorated by this sculpture by Henry Moore). The Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Fermilab, was named in Fermi's honour, and the US Postal Service has issued a stamp to commemorate his centenary.

This photograph, from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Image Library, shows Fermi in the centre, together with Robert Oppenheimer (left) and Ernest Lawrence (right).

Credit: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory