Enrico Fermi: Biography, Creativity, Career, Personal Life

Table of contents:

Enrico Fermi: Biography, Creativity, Career, Personal Life
Enrico Fermi: Biography, Creativity, Career, Personal Life

Video: Enrico Fermi: Biography, Creativity, Career, Personal Life

Video: Enrico Fermi: Biography, Creativity, Career, Personal Life
Video: Enrico Fermi Short Biography 2024, March
Anonim

Enrico Fermi was completely absorbed in science. In his declining years, he even wanted to write a book on the difficult questions of physics, but he could not. Enrico once said that he did only a third of what was planned for him. Later Bruno Maksimovich Pontecorvo will say that this "third" is worthy maybe 6, or even 8 Nobel prizes, so great were the achievements of this man.

Enrico Fermi
Enrico Fermi

At this stage of development, humanity cannot imagine life without nuclear energy, because nuclear energy is used in every country, in many areas and is, without exaggeration, one of the most important resources. Despite the operation of many thermal power plants and hydroelectric power plants, nuclear power plants that use mainly nuclear energy are in many ways ahead of most of the known methods of energy production in terms of their criteria. But with all this, many people do not know the creator of the first nuclear reactor.

Fermi's youth and early years

The hero of our history was born in Rome on September 29, 1901 in a simple Italian family. His family had two more children, besides Enrico: an older sister and an older brother, Giulio, with whom they were very friendly. Boys from childhood conducted physical experiments and designed electric motors. Unfortunately, in 1915, Giulio passed away due to an unsuccessful complex medical operation. After that, Fermi's character changed a lot: the boy became more withdrawn, spending all his free time reading books on physics and mathematics. This was soon noticed by his father, who in time was able to help his son develop an interest in the exact sciences, selecting scientific literature for him. The young man successfully passed the exams at the Higher Normal School, located in Pisa, and after 4 years, having received an excellent education, he successfully graduated from it, after which he received a degree in the study of X-rays at the University of Pisa.

Image
Image

Fermi was an intern at many universities, with many talented scientists, thereby gaining a lot of experience. In 1925, he began teaching at the University of Rome and in the same year discovered particles with half-integer spin, which were later called fermions. The very next year, Fermi was appointed professor at the University of Rome.

The "Roman" period of the life of Enrico Fermi

It should be noted that this period of his life was the most fruitful. For example, in 1929-1930, a young professor developed the basic rules for quantizing the electromagnetic field, thereby making a very significant contribution to the development of quantum electrodynamics. Surprisingly, at the age of 27 he became a member of the famous Royal Academy of Sciences of Italy. From about 1932, Enrico began to work in the field of nuclear physics and, two years later, created an initial quantitative theory of beta decay, which later, although it turned out to be partly wrong, laid the foundation for the theory of weak interactions of elementary particles.

Image
Image

Undoubtedly, Enrico Fermi has enriched this area of science, so it is not at all strange that a large number of concepts in this branch of physics bear his name, for example, there is the Fermi constant, the Fermi selection rule and the chemical element "Fermi". In 1928, Enrico Fermi married the Jewess Laura Capon, and the happy husband and wife had two children, Nella and Giulio. Like many scholars of the time, he was a member of the fascist party.

Receiving the Nobel Prize and moving to the USA

The scientific achievements of the gifted scientist amazed many scientists, and in 1938 Fermi was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on obtaining radioactive elements. These works were not only highly noted by many scientists, but actually laid the foundation for modern science - neutron physics. To receive the award, the Enrico family went to Stockholm, and after that they decided not to return to Italy, due to the tightening of the position of Jews in the country and went to the United States of America, where Fermi received 5 offers at once to take professorships at different universities.

Image
Image

A successful career awaited physics in America. The scientist responded to an invitation from Columbia University in New York. Thus, Enrico Fermi and his entire family emigrated to the United States, taking American citizenship in 1944. It was this period in the life of the great scientist that was marked by scientific achievements in the field of nuclear reactions, since it was in America that Fermi created a nuclear reactor.

Building a nuclear reactor

Fermi put forward the idea that during the fission of a uranium nucleus, the number of produced neutrons can be greater than the number absorbed, and as a consequence, this can lead to a chain reaction. The study yielded a result, although it was rather vague. After working with the uranium core, Enrico switched to work in another system - the uranium-graphite one. In the summer of 1941, a series of tests began, a total of about thirty, and by the summer of 1942 the magnitude of neutron multiplication was determined.

Image
Image

This value turned out to be more than one, which indicated a positive result, the presence of a chain reaction. This meant that a high-quality chain reaction could be obtained in a fairly large graphite-uranium lattice, and this, in turn, marked the beginning of the design of a nuclear reactor. The processed data were sent to create a reactor, construction of which began in Chicago and was completed on December 2, 1942. This reactor demonstrated a self-sustaining chain reaction. The lab's work was initiated by the government for military purposes. This is how the world's first nuclear reactor was created.

Recommended: