Enrico Fermi
Enrico Fermi (1901-54), US physicist, born in Italy. He discovered neutron-induced radioactivity (1934-37) while working at the University of Rome and was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1938. Disliking Tally’s Fascist regime and having a Jewish wife, he did not return to Italy after receiving the prize in Sweden, travelling instead to the US with his family. There he was engaged in the Manhattan Project (1942) to pro-duce the first atom bomb. In December 1942 he built the world’s first atomic pile in the squash courts of Chicago University. This was a simple nuclear reactor in which a controlled chain reaction took place. In 1954 the annual Fermi Awards for outstanding work in nuclear physics were established in his honour.
