Archival photo of Enrico Fermi as a boy (second from left) growing up in Rome, Italy. His brother Giulio (who died in childhood) is third from right. Their older sister Maria stands on the far right, back row.
Gallery of Enrico Fermi
1917
Rome, Italy
Portrait of Enrico Fermi in Rome in 1917.
College/University
Gallery of Enrico Fermi
Pisa, Italy
Enrico Fermi as a student.
Career
Gallery of Enrico Fermi
1939
98 Rochester St, Upton, NY 11973, United States
Atomic scientists (from left) John D. Kraus, Enrico Fermi, Werner Heisenberg, Clarence Yoakum and Samuel Abraham Goudsmit posing for a group portrait at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, in Upton, on Long Island, New York, 23 July 1939.
Gallery of Enrico Fermi
1939
New York, NY 10027, United States
Professor Enrico Fermi, famed Italian physicist who won the 1938 Nobel Prize for his discovery of radioactive substances, is pictured inspecting equipment at the laboratory at Columbia University.
Gallery of Enrico Fermi
1940
New York, NY 10027, United States
Enrico Fermi around 1940.
Gallery of Enrico Fermi
1940
United States
Fermi with Zinn and Groves.
Gallery of Enrico Fermi
1940
United States
Left to right are, Robert J. Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and Ernest O. Lawrence.
Gallery of Enrico Fermi
1942
New York, NY 10027, United States
Italian-born physicist Dr. Enrico Fermi draws a diagram at a blackboard with mathematical equations.
Gallery of Enrico Fermi
1942
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Enrico Fermi is shown here in the control room of the Chicago synchro-cyclotron.
Gallery of Enrico Fermi
1942
United States
Fermi's ID photo from Los Alamos.
Gallery of Enrico Fermi
1935
Rome, Italy
Enrico Fermi, Italian atom physicist. Photo around 1935.
Gallery of Enrico Fermi
1935
Enrico Fermi in 1935.
Gallery of Enrico Fermi
1945
5801 S Ellis Ave, Chicago, IL 60637, United States
University of Chicago scientists who were instrumental in the development of the atomic bomb gathered for luncheon to open the Institute of Nuclear Studies and Institute of Metals at the University. (Left to Right) seated: W.H. Zachariasen, Harold C. Urey, Cyril Smith; Director of Metals Institute, Enrico Fermi, and Samuel K. Allison; Director of Nuclear Studies Institute. Standing (Left to Right): Edward Teller, T. Hogness, Walter Zinn, Clarence Zener, Joseph E. Mayer, Philip W. Schutz, R.H. Christ; Columbia University, and Carl Eckhart; University of California.
Gallery of Enrico Fermi
1946
1118 E 58th St, Chicago, IL 60637, United States
A group of physicists gathered on the steps of Eckhart Hall on the University of Chicago campus. The scientists all took part in the building of the first atomic pile in 1942 and are celebrating the fourth anniversary of the event. Back row, left to right: N. Hilberry, Samuel Allison, Thomas Brill, Robert Nobles, Warren Nyer, and Marvin Wilkenberg. Middle row, left to right: Harold Agnew, William Sturm, Harold Lichtenberger, Leona W. Marshall, and Leo Szilard. Front row, left to right: Enrico Fermi, Walter Zinn, Albert Wattenberg, and Herbert Anderson.
Gallery of Enrico Fermi
1948
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Italian physicist Dr. Enrico Fermi checks an electrical circuit on a neutron counter, Chicago, Illinois, 1948.
Gallery of Enrico Fermi
1948
5801 S Ellis Ave, Chicago, IL 60637, United States
Portrait photo of Enrico Fermi in the University of Chicago, Chicago classroom, 1948.
Gallery of Enrico Fermi
1949
Milan, Italy
Professor Enrico Fermi, Italian-American physicist and Nobel laureate, known for achieving the first controlled nuclear reaction, lecturing on the optical characteristics of neutrons at the Domegani Institute in Milan.
Gallery of Enrico Fermi
1950
Italy
Enrico Fermi in Italy around 1950.
Gallery of Enrico Fermi
1950
5801 S Ellis Ave, Chicago, IL 60637, United States
Enrico Fermi working on the University of Chicago's atom smasher.
Gallery of Enrico Fermi
1950
Italy
Italian physicists Enrico Fermi and Bruno Pontecorvo studying. Early 1950s.
Gallery of Enrico Fermi
1951
5801 S Ellis Ave, Chicago, IL 60637, United States
Dr. Enrico Fermi at the controls of a synchro-cyclotron at the University of Chicago.
Gallery of Enrico Fermi
1954
Viale Giovanni Polvani, 2, 23829 Varenna LC, Italy
"Italian-born American physicist Enrico Fermi, is wife Laura Capon and Italian physicists Bruno Rossi and Gilberto Bernardini walking together at the 2nd International class of Nuclear Physics at villa Monastero. Varenna, July 1954. Photo by Mario De Biasi.
Achievements
Piazza di Santa Croce, 16, 50122 Firenze FI, Italy
Memorial plaque in the Basilica Santa Croce, Florence.
Membership
Royal Society
Enrico Fermi was a member of the Royal Society.
German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
Enrico Fermi was a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
Accademia dei Lincei
Enrico Fermi was a member of the Accademia dei Lincei.
Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union
Enrico Fermi was a member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union.
American Philosophical Society
Enrico Fermi was a member of the American Philosophical Society.
American Association for the Advancement of Science
Enrico Fermi was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze detta dei XL
Enrico Fermi was a member of the Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze detta dei XL.
Academy of Sciences of Turin
Enrico Fermi was a member of the Academy of Sciences of Turin.
National Academy of Sciences
Enrico Fermi was a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Archival photo of Enrico Fermi as a boy (second from left) growing up in Rome, Italy. His brother Giulio (who died in childhood) is third from right. Their older sister Maria stands on the far right, back row.
Atomic scientists (from left) John D. Kraus, Enrico Fermi, Werner Heisenberg, Clarence Yoakum and Samuel Abraham Goudsmit posing for a group portrait at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, in Upton, on Long Island, New York, 23 July 1939.
Professor Enrico Fermi, famed Italian physicist who won the 1938 Nobel Prize for his discovery of radioactive substances, is pictured inspecting equipment at the laboratory at Columbia University.
5801 S Ellis Ave, Chicago, IL 60637, United States
University of Chicago scientists who were instrumental in the development of the atomic bomb gathered for luncheon to open the Institute of Nuclear Studies and Institute of Metals at the University. (Left to Right) seated: W.H. Zachariasen, Harold C. Urey, Cyril Smith; Director of Metals Institute, Enrico Fermi, and Samuel K. Allison; Director of Nuclear Studies Institute. Standing (Left to Right): Edward Teller, T. Hogness, Walter Zinn, Clarence Zener, Joseph E. Mayer, Philip W. Schutz, R.H. Christ; Columbia University, and Carl Eckhart; University of California.
A group of physicists gathered on the steps of Eckhart Hall on the University of Chicago campus. The scientists all took part in the building of the first atomic pile in 1942 and are celebrating the fourth anniversary of the event. Back row, left to right: N. Hilberry, Samuel Allison, Thomas Brill, Robert Nobles, Warren Nyer, and Marvin Wilkenberg. Middle row, left to right: Harold Agnew, William Sturm, Harold Lichtenberger, Leona W. Marshall, and Leo Szilard. Front row, left to right: Enrico Fermi, Walter Zinn, Albert Wattenberg, and Herbert Anderson.
Professor Enrico Fermi, Italian-American physicist and Nobel laureate, known for achieving the first controlled nuclear reaction, lecturing on the optical characteristics of neutrons at the Domegani Institute in Milan.
Viale Giovanni Polvani, 2, 23829 Varenna LC, Italy
"Italian-born American physicist Enrico Fermi, is wife Laura Capon and Italian physicists Bruno Rossi and Gilberto Bernardini walking together at the 2nd International class of Nuclear Physics at villa Monastero. Varenna, July 1954. Photo by Mario De Biasi.
(Indisputably, this is a modern classic of science. Based ...)
Indisputably, this is a modern classic of science. Based on a course of lectures delivered by the author at Columbia University, the text is elementary in treatment and remarkable for its clarity and organization. Although it is assumed that the reader is familiar with the fundamental facts of thermometry and calorimetry, no advanced mathematics beyond calculus is assumed.
(The lecture notes presented here in facsimile were prepar...)
The lecture notes presented here in facsimile were prepared by Enrico Fermi for students taking his course at the University of Chicago in 1954. They are vivid examples of his unique ability to lecture simply and clearly on the most essential aspects of quantum mechanics. At the close of each lecture, Fermi created a single problem for his students. These challenging exercises were not included in Fermi's notes but were preserved in the notes of his students.
Neutron Physics for Nuclear Reactors: Unpublished Writings by Enrico Fermi
(This unique volume gives an accurate and very detailed de...)
This unique volume gives an accurate and very detailed description of the functioning and operation of basic nuclear reactors, as emerging from yet unpublished papers by Nobel Laureate Enrico Fermi. In the first part, the entire course of lectures on Neutron Physics delivered by Fermi at Los Alamos is reported, according to the version made by Anthony P French. Here, the fundamental physical phenomena are described very clearly and comprehensively, giving the appropriate physics grounds for the functioning of nuclear piles. In the second part, all the patents issued by Fermi (and coworkers) on the functioning, construction and operation of several different kinds of nuclear reactors are reported. Here, the main engineering problems are encountered and solved by employing simple and practical methods, which are described in detail. This seminal work mainly caters to students, teachers and researchers working in nuclear physics and engineering, but it is of invaluable interest to historians of physics too, since the material presented here is entirely novel.
Enrico Fermi was an Italian-born American scientist who was one of the chief architects of the nuclear age. He developed the mathematical statistics required to clarify a large class of subatomic phenomena, explored nuclear transformations caused by neutrons, and directed the first controlled chain reaction involving nuclear fission. He was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize for Physics.
Background
Enrico Fermi was born on September 29, 1901, in Rome, Lazio, Italy. His father, Alberto Fermi, was an administrative employee of the Italian railroads; his mother, Ida de Gattis, was a schoolteacher. Ida was a remarkable person who was the daughter of an army officer. She trained as a school teacher and taught in elementary schools for most of her life. Highly intelligent, she was the major influence on her children after her marriage to Alberto in 1898. Ida was 27 years old when she married but her husband Alberto was 41. He worked for railway companies in various parts of Italy but had moved to Rome in 1888. He was promoted to inspector in the year he married Ida and by the end of his career he had risen to play a major role in what was by that time the state owned railway company. Enrico was the third of his parents' children having an older sister Maria (born in 1899) and older brother Giulio (born in 1900). In line with the custom of the time, Enrico was brought up by a nurse away from the family until he was about 30 months old. He was then strictly brought up although the family were not religious (something which upset Alberto's family who were all devout Catholics except Alberto).
Fermi enjoyed science and spent much time building electric motors and mechanical toys with Maria and Giulio. In January 1915, when he was 14, tragedy struck the family when Giulio died undergoing a minor operation for a throat abscess. This, of course, had a deep and lasting affect on Fermi who, already somewhat introverted, became even less outgoing. At this time he became friends with Enrico Persico, who was in the same class at school.
Education
When he was six years old Enrico Fermi began to attend an elementary school which was chosen because it was a secular establishment. He showed great talents, especially in mathematics and by the time he left elementary school at the age of ten. He then spent five years at the ginnasio and then a further three years at the liceo preparing to enter university. He was an outstanding student throughout his education being clearly the most able in his class.
Entry to the Scuola Normale Superiore at the University of Pisa was by competitive examination. Fermi sat the exam on 14 November 1918 and wrote an essay on the given theme of Characteristics of sound. In his essay Fermi derived the system of partial differential equations for a vibrating rod, then used Fourier analysis to solve them. It was written at the level of a doctoral thesis rather than a school examination. When the examiner read Fermi's entry he was so amazed that he set up a meeting with him, telling him that it would undoubtedly win the competition and moreover that Fermi would without doubt become a famous scientist.
In Pisa Fermi was advised by the director of the physics laboratory Luigi Puccianti. Perhaps we should clarify this statement, for although Puccianti nominally had this role he acknowledged that there was little that he could teach Fermi, and frequently he asked Fermi to teach him something. Soon Fermi was publishing papers, his first Sulla dinamica di un sistema rigido di cariche elettriche in moto traslatorio being published in 1921. Another publication in 1921 was followed by the most important of his early papers in the following year, namely Sopra i fenomeni che avvengono in vicinanza di una lina oraria (On the phenomena occurring near a world line). This paper gave an important result about the Euclidean nature of space near a world line in the geometry of general relativity. Fermi submitted his doctoral thesis Un teorema di calcolo delle probabilità ed alcune sue applicazioni to the Scuola Normale Superiore and was examined on 7 July 1922. The thesis was published in his Collected Works in 1962. After the award of his doctorate Fermi returned to Rome and later did postdoctoral studies at the Universities of Göttingen and Leiden.
After the award of his doctorate Fermi returned to Rome and began working with the mathematicians there, particularly Castelnuovo, Levi-Civita and Enriques. He also made contact with the director of the physics laboratory. In October 1922 he was awarded a Government Scholarship which enabled him to work with Max Born in Göttingen in the first half of 1923. He was then appointed to teach mathematics to scientists in Göttingen during the academic year 1923-1924. After spending the summer of 1924 hiking in the Dolomites, he went to Leiden to work with Ehrenfest. He returned to Italy for the start of academic year 1924-1925, and he spent that academic year and the following one as a temporary Lecturer in Mathematical Physics and Mechanics at the University of Florence. At this point Fermi was trying to maximise his chances of an academic career, so he published a large number of papers. He was disappointed to lose out to Giovanni Giorgi in the competition for the chair of mathematical physics at the University of Cagliari in Sardinia. It is worth noting that both Levi-Civita and Volterra supported Fermi. Perhaps it was good that Fermi lost for in 1926 another competition was announced, this time for the chair of theoretical physics at the University of Rome. This time, despite being very young for such a position, Fermi was appointed by the committee which recognised the exceptional quality of his scientific work.
At Rome Fermi began to built up the physics institute, which was surprisingly small when he arrived. In 1929, he was appointed to the Accademia dei Lincei. The Academy appointment provided Fermi with a substantially additional salary. He made his first visit to the United States in 1930 when he visited the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He had interesting discussions with George Uhlenbeck, who had moved there from Holland, and Ehrenfest joined them over the summer. Fermi gave lectures on quantum theory.
In 1934 Fermi carried out his most important work on the artificial radioactivity produced by neutrons. He published this in Radioattività indotta dal bombardamento di neutron (1934) and in further papers Artificial radioactivity produced by neutron bombardment (1934, 1935) in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London and On the absorption and diffusion of slow neutrons (1936). This work led to the discovery of nuclear fission and experimentalists were able to use his results to create new elements. Fermi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938.
Another important paper, published by Fermi in 1935, was Sulla quantizzazione del gas perfetto monoatomico. In this paper he presented Fermi statistics, giving a statistical model of the atom and nucleus.
In the summer of 1938 Mussolini suddenly followed Hitler in Germany in starting a campaign against Jews. Fermi was not Jewish but his wife was and, although his two children were Roman Catholics, the family's situation became uncomfortable. Fermi decided to write to universities in the United States looking for a position. He did this with complete secrecy for fear that he would be prevented if the authorities learned of his intentions. He wrote letters to various universities and posted them all in different towns not to arouse suspicions. He received five offers and accepted the one from Columbia University. The award of the Nobel Prize proved a wonderful opportunity for the family to leave Italy and travel to the presentation ceremony in Stockholm, then go straight on to the United States. Amusingly, Fermi had to pass an arithmetic test before being granted a visa for the United States. He arrived with his family in New York on 2 January 1939.
Fermi's work at Columbia University, in collaboration with other members of his team, soon showed possible applications of his research. It took a while for things to get moving on the uranium project but a decision to make a major effort was taken, by coincidence, the day before Pearl Harbour in December 1941. The project was to be carried out at the University of Chicago with various groups, including Fermi's group at Columbia, being brought together there. This was not greatly to Fermi's liking for a number of reasons. First he was very happy at Columbia University, second it made him more of an administrator and less of a scientist, and thirdly once the United States was at war with Italy, Italians were classed as 'enemy aliens' and severe travel restrictions within America were imposed. However, the difficulties were overcome and by the summer of 1942 Fermi was in Chicago. On 2 December 1942 the team, headed by Fermi, achieved the first controlled release of nuclear energy - it is probably not an understatement to say that a new era had begun. In 1944, Fermi became American citizen and in that year he began to take a full part in the Los Alamos project to build a bomb. He taught various courses at Los Alamos for the scientists taking part in the project.
After the war ended Fermi decided that he wanted to return to university life. He accepted the offer of a professorship at the University of Chicago in 1945. Over the next few years he undertook research, becoming interested in the origin of cosmic rays, and he also worked on pion-nucleon interaction trying to make progress on understanding strong interactions. He made many research visits such as Los Alamos, which he visited every year, the University of Washington (1947), the University of California at Berkeley (1948) and the Brookhaven National Laboratory (1952). He attended a high-energy physics conference in Como, Italy, in 1949. This was his first trip back to Europe since he left over ten years before. During this trip he also lectured to the Accademia dei Lincei with Castelnuovo chairing the meeting.
In the summer of 1954 Fermi returned to Italy and gave a series of lectures in the Villa Monastero in Varenna on Lake Como. He then went on to a summer school near Chamonix in France. He tried to follow his usual energetic lifestyle with walks in the mountains and playing sports. However, he was clearly suffering from health problems which doctors had failed to diagnose. Back in Chicago doctors diagnosed stomach cancer and an operation was carried out. He survived the operation and returned home. He had told his friends that he would write up his course on nuclear physics as his last service to science if he was spared long enough. He only managed to write an incomplete page of contents for the course.
Fermi was fundamentally an agnostic, although he had been baptized a Catholic.
Politics
In 1929 Fermi was appointed to the Royal Academy of Italy by Mussolini without an election. Fermi deserved the honor on academic grounds and it should not be assumed that his appointment by Mussolini meant that Fermi supported fascism. Fermi was pretty non-political and Mussolini felt that at least he was not appointing a political opponent. On 27 April 1929 he joined the Fascist Party. He later opposed Fascism when the 1938 racial laws were promulgated by Mussolini in order to bring Italian Fascism ideologically closer to German National Socialism. These laws threatened his spouse, who was Jewish, and put many of Fermi's research assistants out of work.
Views
Fermi’s scientific accomplishments were in both theoretical and experimental physics, an unusual feat in the twentieth century, when increasing specialization tends to narrow the field of study. Fermi’s statistics (independently found also by Paul Dirac) and his theory of beta decay were his greatest theoretical contributions. Artificial radioactivity produced by neutron bombardment, slow neutrons, and the realization of a nuclear chain reaction were his greatest experimental achievements. These highlights and his many other results have left their imprint on the most diverse parts of physics.
At the time quantum mechanics reached its full development; non-relativistic problems, at least in principle, were soluble except for mathematical difficulties. In this sense atomic physics was showing signs of exhaustion, and one could expect the next really important advances to be in the study of the nucleus. Realizing this, Fermi decided to switch to nuclear physics. He initially investigated the theory of the hyperfine structure of the spectral lines and the nuclear magnetic momenta, a suitable subject for making the transition from atomic to nuclear physics.
Frédéric Joliet and Irène Joliot-Curie discovered artificial radioactivity - the creation of radioactive isotopes of stable nuclei by alpha particle bombardment. The Joliots’ discovery provided the occasion for experimental activity which Fermi continued for the rest of his life. Fermi reasoned that neutrons should be more effective than alpha particles in producing radioactive elements because they are not repelled by the nuclear charge and thus have a much greater probability of entering the target nuclei. Acting on this idea, Fermi bombarded several elements of increasing atomic numbers with neutrons. He hoped to find an artificial radioactivity produced by the neutrons.
Fermi and his collaborators, having proved that no radioactive isotopes were formed between lead and uranium, put forward the natural hypothesis that the activity was due to transuranic elements. These studies, which were continued by Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner, Irène Joliot Curie, Frédéric Joliot, and Savitch, culminated in 1938 in the discovery of fission by Hahn and Fritz Strassmann.
Fermi himself had concluded, at the end of the war, that nuclear physics was reaching a stage of maturity and that the future fundamental developments would be in the study of elementary particles. He thus prepared himself for this new field by learning as much as possible of the theory and by fostering the building of suitable accelerators with which to perform experiments. We have a hint of his effort to assimilate the theory in his Silliman lectures at Yale in the spring of 1950, which were published as Elementary Particles (New Haven, 1951). He systematically organized a great number of calculations on all subjects, numerical data, important reprints, etc., which he called the “artificial memory.” This material was a daily working tool for him and substituted for books, which he scarcely used anymore. It also helped his memory, which, although still excellent, was not as amazing as in his early youth and could not cope with the avalanche of new results.
In addition to this experimental activity, Fermi did theoretical work on the origin of cosmic rays, devising a mechanism of acceleration by which each proton tends to equipartition of energy with a whole galaxy. These ideas had an important influence on the subsequent studies on cosmic rays. He also developed a statistical method for treating high-energy collision phenomena and multiple production of particles. This method has also received wide and useful applications.
Quotations:
"Experimental confirmation of a prediction is merely a measurement. An experiment disproving a prediction is a discovery."
"Before I came here I was confused about this subject. Having listened to your lecture I am still confused. But on a higher level."
"There are two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you've made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery."
"Never underestimate the joy people derive from hearing something they already know."
"The fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction a danger to humanity as a whole. It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light. For these reasons, we believe it is important for the President of the United States to tell the American public and the world what we think is wrong on fundamental ethical principles to initiate the development of such a weapon."
"It is not good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge."
"Some people stick with the traditional, feeling struck by the epic beauty or blown away by the insane scale of the universe. Personally, I go for the old "existential meltdown followed by acting weird for the next half hour. But everyone feels something."
Membership
Enrico Fermi was a member of the Royal Academy of Italy, the Royal Society, the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the Accademia dei Lincei, the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, the American Philosophical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze detta dei XL, the Academy of Sciences of Turin, and the National Academy of Sciences.
Royal Society
,
United Kingdom
German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
,
Germany
Accademia dei Lincei
,
Italy
Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union
,
Soviet Union
American Philosophical Society
,
United States
American Association for the Advancement of Science
,
United States
Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze detta dei XL
,
Italy
Academy of Sciences of Turin
,
Italy
National Academy of Sciences
,
United States
Royal Academy of Italy
,
Italy
Personality
Fermi, who enjoyed excellent health until his fatal illness, led a very simple, frugal life with outdoor activities as his main recreations. His unusual physical strength and endurance enabled him to hike, play tennis, ski, and swim; although in none of these sports was he outstanding.
Physical Characteristics:
In 1954 Fermi’s health began to deteriorate, but with great will power he carried on almost as usual. He spent the summer in Europe, where he taught at summer schools in Italy and France, but on his return to Chicago in September he was hospitalized. An exploratory operation revealed an incurable stomach cancer. Fully aware of the seriousness of his illness and his impending death, he nevertheless maintained his remarkable equanimity and self-control.
Quotes from others about the person
"He [Fermi] was simply unable to let things be foggy. Since they always are, this kept him pretty active." - Robert Oppenheimer, American theoretical physicist
"If Fermi had been born a few years earlier, one could well imagine him discovering Rutherford's atomic nucleus, and then developing Bohr's theory of the hydrogen atom. If this sounds like hyperbole, anything about Fermi is likely to sound like hyperbole." - Charles Percy Snow, English novelist and physical chemist
Interests
skiing, swimming
Philosophers & Thinkers
Otto Hahn, Joseph Fourier
Writers
Gabriele D'Annunzio
Sport & Clubs
tennis
Music & Bands
Giuseppe Verdi
Connections
Enrico Fermi married Laura Capon on 19 July 1928; they had one daughter Nella born 31 January 1931 and one son Giulio born on 16 February 1936. Laura Capon was the daughter of a distinguished Jewish family in Rome. Her Jewish background will later lead them to emigrate to America to escape the rise of Fascism and Nazism in Europe.