The Pope of physics : Enrico Fermi and the birth of the Atomic Age / Gino Segrè and Bettina Hoerlin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Segrè, Gino, author.

Hoerlin, Bettina, 1939- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Fermi, Enrico, 1901-1954.

Physicists--Italy--Biography.

Physicists.

Italy.

Physicists--United States--Biography.

United States.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xi, 351 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, portraits ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Henry Holt and Company, 2016.

Summary:

"The first full-scale biography of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist and one of the fathers of the atomic age, Enrico Fermi. Enrico Fermi is unquestionably the most famous scientist to come from Italy since Galileo, so revered that he's known as The Pope of Physics. A modest, unassuming man, Fermi was nevertheless one of the most productive and creative scientists of the twentieth century, one of the fathers of the Atomic Bomb and a Nobel Prize winner whose contributions to physics and nuclear technology live on today, with the largest particle accelerator in the United States and the nation's most significant science and technology award both bearing his name. In this, the first major biography of Fermi in English, Gino Segre, professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania, brings this scientific visionary to life. An examination of the human dramas that touched Fermi's life as well as a thrilling history of scientific innovation in the twentieth century--including the birth of one of its most controversial disciplines, nuclear physics--this is the comprehensive biography that Fermi deserves"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Prologue: Trinity

Italy, beginnings. Family roots

The Little Match (Il Piccolo Fiammifero) ; Leaning in : physics and Pisa ; Student days ; The young protégé ; The summer of 1924 ; Florence ; Quantum leaps ; Enrico and Laura

Passages. The boys of Via Panisperna ; The Royal Academy ; Crossing the Atlantic ; Bombarding the nucleus ; Decay ; The neutron comes to Rome ; The rise and fall of the boys ; Transitions ; Stockholm calls

Hello, America. Fission ; News travels ; Chain reaction ; The race begins ; New Americans ; The sleeping giant ; Chicago bound ; Critical pile (CP-1) ; The day the Atomic Age was born

The Atomic City. The Manhattan Project : a three-legged stool ; Signor Fermi becomes Mister Farmer ; Götterdämmerung ; The hill ; "No acceptable alternative" ; Aftershock ; Goodbye, Mr. Farmer

Home. Physicist with a capital 'F' ; The Fermi Method ; The super ; Circling back ; Last gift to Italy (Ultimo regalo all'Italia) ; Farewell to the navigator.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Athenaeum literary award ; 2016

Local Notes:

Athenaeum literary award copy: Scott fund bookplate; circulating copy: Beardwood Fund bookplate..

ISBN:

9781627790055

1627790055

OCLC:

936192062

Online:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description