Fermi, Enrico

Name:
Fermi, Enrico
Detailed information:
(1901–1954). An Italian physicist who later became a U.S. citizen. He developed a statistical approach to fundamental problems of physical chemistry based on Pauli's exclusion principle. He discovered induced or artificial radioactivity resulting from neutron impingement, as well as slow or thermal neutrons. He was professor of physics at Columbia (1939) and awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1938. He was the first to achieve a controlled nuclear chain reaction, directed the construction of the first nuclear reactor at the University of Chicago (1942), and worked on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos. He also carried on fundamental research on subatomic particles using sophisticated statistical techniques. Element 100 (fermium) is named after him.