Presenting an image one naturally assumes to be of a good natured college professor mentoring a class of PhD undergraduates, with his balding and amiable countenance further lending charm, Italian physicist Enrico Fermi poses in this staged photo that was produced, possibly in 1949.
In the photo he is standing inside a classroom of the Chicago university and in front of him, on the board, is scribbled the formula for fine structure constant in electromagnetic interaction, but with a part of the formula inverted and incorrect.
Enrico Fermi, a child prodigy.
Forty-nine years old at the time and having already left an indelible mark in history by successfully producing a nuclear chain reaction on a bitterly cold December morning in 1942, Enrico Fermi was a luminary and one of the brilliant minds of the 20th century.
A child prodigy who completed his doctorate at the prestigious Scuola Normale Superiore at Pisa in Italy, earning entry with his essay on the specific characteristics of sound, he was an extraordinary physicist with a penchant for ingenuity and a genial human being.
His contribution to science wasn’t just limited to producing the chain reaction, which had emerged from his earlier experiments in nuclear irradiation in 1934, when he was still residing in his city of birth of Rome – but influenced each and every atom in the field of modern-day physics.
Birthday Cards by Farbound.Net featuring Enrico Fermi.
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Enrico Fermi’s career in teaching.
Fermi had started his career as a lecturer at the university of Florence and followed it up with a brief period of professorship at the university of Rome. In the U.S., he had taught at Columbia university and later the university of Chicago, as a naturalized American citizen.
Like many eminent European scientists who migrated to the U.S. in the wake of the war in Europe and Adolf Hitler’s racist policy on Jews, Fermi’s own reason for leaving Italy was his wife Laura Capone, an Italian woman of Jewish faith.
His departure from Italy was necessitated by Benito Mussolini’s antisemitic laws, which was imposed to ostracized Italian Jews on the 14th of July in 1938 – and was formally known as the Manifesto of Race.
Enrico Fermi’s work on nuclear fission.
Fermi had arrived in the U.S. a month after receiving the Nobel Prize in Oslo, on the 10th of December in 1938. In the U.S. he had joined Columbia university as a professor of physics and shortly afterwards begun work on nuclear fission.
Inspired by the earlier work of scientists Otto Hann, Fritz Strassmann, Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch, who as a team had discovered nuclear fission in 1938, he conducted his first experiment on nuclear fission at the university’s Pupin laboratories, on the 25th of January in 1939 – later proving uranium when bombarded with neurons released energy.
Enrico Fermi’s work on producing the chain reaction.
In 1942, Fermi moved with his research team to the Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory to begin work on creating the world’s first nuclear reactor. The Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory was a part of Chicago university and a front for the Manhattan Project, with experiments and research conducted behind its facade.
Here on the 2nd of December in 1942, he successfully produced the world’s first nuclear chain reaction. This experiment that took place on a bitterly cold day at a squash court of the university, was attended by students, colleagues and high-ranking military personnel.
The test was conducted inside a reactor nicknamed the Chicago Pile I – which he and collaborating scientists had conceived without a blueprint and was assembled by undergraduates and university dropouts with building skills.
Fermi was, later, invited to join the community at Los Alamos by Robert J. Oppenheimer, and in 1944 he was appointed associate director of the project.
Enrico’s Fermi’s calculations.
The nuclear chain reaction that was produced in Chicago was originally designated to be at Lemont, a village some twenty seven miles away but which at the time was unavailable due a labour strike.
Chicago was a bustling city with a population close to 3.4 million inhabitants and conducting the experiment was not without risk – and not surprisingly had raised more than eyebrows when the university was asked to substitute for the designated site.
In an article published ten years later in 1952, however, Fermi had put the residents of Chicago at ease. In this article he had disclosed that the experiment conducted had in no way posed a risk to the city – as the fission was planned to take place in slow stages and not at the accelerated rate required for an explosion.
On that day in December, he had thoroughly checked his calculations and had them doubled checked by other scientists. Preliminary tests were also conducted to negate the possibility of a reactor explosion or nuclear contamination.
Lacking the sophisticated gadgetry and equipment of the modern era, Fermi had relied on a slide rule to gauge and conduct the atomic fission. He had carried out all his calculations mentally and with pinpoint precision, with no room for error.
Enrico Fermi’s sobriquet of Pope.
The sobriquet Pope that has come to be associated with Fermi, was given to him by his colleagues in the university of Rome, where he with other noted Italian physicists had initiated an international school of physics, commonly referred to as the Roman group. The sobriquet was given to him to honor his infallibility and brilliance.
Fermi passed away at the premature age of 53, on the 28th November in 1954. He was afflicted with stomach cancer – sometimes said to have been triggered because of his lifelong work with radioactive material. His last days were spend at his house in Chicago, Illinois.
The photo and the formula.
This photo was produced by an unknown photographer, possibly a student. It was produced inside a Chicago university classroom and later featured on a U.S. postal stamp to mark the 100th anniversary of Enrico Fermi. The production date of the photo is usually given as 1943-1949.
In the photo the formula scribbled on the board by Fermi, has the h of the symbol (hc) for reduced Planck’s constant transposed with the 2 of the symbol (e2) for elementary charge. It is also presented inverted. The correct formula can be found here on this webpage of the U.S. War Department of Energy, Office of Science, Life of Enrico Fermi, Formula.
It is often debated whether this was an absent minded mistake by Fermi, a teaser left for students to correct, or intended as a joke.
I F I This is an Independent story highlighting this famous Vintage Photo of Enrico Fermi scribbling the formula for fine structure constant in electromagnetic interaction on a black board inside a classroom of Chicago university. The story also sheds a bit of light on Enrico Fermi as a physicist and his contribution to science, including producing the atomic chain reaction in 1942. It has been created from facts curated out of literary and historical sources. I
