Bibliograph

The Pope of Physics, Enrico Fermi and the birth of the atomic age, Gino Segrè and Bettina Hoerlin

Type

Label

The Pope of Physics, Enrico Fermi and the birth of the atomic age, Gino Segrè and Bettina Hoerlin

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references and index

resource.biographical

individual biography

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

The Pope of Physics

Nature of contents

bibliography

Oclc number

936192062

Responsibility statement

Gino Segrè and Bettina Hoerlin

Sub title

Enrico Fermi and the birth of the atomic age

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

Table Of Contents

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 -- The boys of Via Panisperna -- The Royal Academy -- Crossing the Atlantic -- Bombarding the neutron -- Decay -- The neutron comes to Rome -- The rise and fall of the boys -- Transitions -- Stockholm calls -- Fission -- News travels -- Chain reaction -- The race begins -- New Americans and the birth of the pile -- The sleeping giant -- Chicago bound -- Critical pile (CP-1) -- The day the atomic age was born -- The Manhattan project: a three-legged stool -- Signor Fermi becomes Mister Farmer -- Götterdämmerung -- The hill -- "No acceptable alternative" -- Aftershock -- Goodbye, Mr. Farmer -- Physicist with a capital 'F' -- The Fermi method -- The super -- Circling back -- Summer of '54 -- Farewell to the navigator

Classification