Giáo hoàng vật lý, Enrico Fermi và sự ra đời của thời đại nguyên tử

by Gino Segrè, Bettina Hoerlin, Phạm Văn Thiều (Translator)

Enrico Fermi là một trong những nhà khoa học vĩ đại của thế giới vật lý. Ông được các đồng nghiệp gọi là Giáo hoàng, và được coi là có bản năng nghiên cứu không thể sai lầm. Những khám phá của ông đã thay đổi thế giới của chúng ta, theo nhiều cách; chúng dẫn đến vũ khí hủy diệt hàng loạt, và các can thiệp y tế cứu mạng. Người đàn ông này đã đấu tranh với các vấn đề như mối đe dọa hủy diệt hạt nhân và mối quan hệ của khoa học với chính trị. Thoát khỏi chủ nghĩa phát xít và chủ nghĩa bài Do Thái, Fermi trở thành nhân vật hàng đầu trong dự án bí mật nhất của Mỹ: chế tạo bom nguyên tử.

Genres: Science, Biography, History, Physics, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Biography Memoir

488 pages, Paperback

First published October 18, 2016

About the author

Professor emeritus who started teaching at the University of Pennsylvania in 1967. Pursued with enthusiasm and considerable a career as a high-energy elementary particle theorist with a side interest in astrophysics.

A long-term interest in history led to his first book, a tale of temperature in all its broad ramifications.

Reviews

[Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a biography of Enrico Fermi (1901- 1954). He is Italy’s greatest scientist since Galileo. Fermi was called Pope by his peers. Fermi’s discoveries covered a broad range from semiconductors, transistors to MRI’s, nuclear reactors to the atomic bomb. He won the Nobel Prize in 1938 in physics for his work on artificial radioactivity produced by neutrons. Winning this award allowed the Fermi family to go to Stockholm, Sweden and from there they escaped to the United States. They fled Italy and its fascism and anti-Semitism just prior to World War II. Fermi’s wife was Jewish. They had two children. Fermi became a professor at Columbia University in New York City, then the University of Chicago and also worked on the Manhattan project.

The book is well written and meticulously researched. Segre and Hoerlin do a great job of bringing Fermi to life in an easily readable fashion. Fermi was one of the greats in the field of physics at a time of many great men such as Lawrence, Oppenheimer and Einstein. I was most interested in the descriptions of life in Italy from 1900 to 1939. The authors did an excellent job in bringing these years to life.

I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. The book is about ten and half hours long. Tim Campbell does a good job narratoring the book. Campbell is a voice over artist and audiobook narrator.

[Bryan Higgs · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I found it to be well-written, informative, and a wonderful biography of a complex and extremely impressive man. The first author is the nephew of Fermi's first graduate student, Emilio Segre, and thus part of an extended 'family' of the people surrounding Enrico Fermi. Altogether, the book portrays Fermi as a man who inspired huge respect and warm feelings from his colleagues, while at the same time describing him as one who was not one to express his feelings. While universally revered as a man dedicated to physics, as colleague, teacher, friend, he seems to have not been as successful as a father. However, given the dramatic scientific global changes that happened during his lifetime, and his inextricable involvement in them, perhaps this was inevitable.

I have read many books on science during the 20th century, including biographies of many of the main scientific contributors to physics. These biographies often covered the rise of Nazi Germany, and the resulting diaspora of the best and brightest of German science, mostly to the USA. Before the rise of Hitler, Germany was preeminent in Science and Mathematics, but after Hitler introduced his anti-Jewish laws, most of the leading figures of science fled the country; true science was replaced by "Aryan science". Germany's preeminence in science and mathematics disappeared for decades. Science in the USA greatly benefited from this diaspora.

Before reading this book, I was unaware of the corresponding situation in Italy. Certainly, I knew some of the history of its fascism under Mussolini, but this book filled in a great deal of what I did not know. Italian physics was certainly not strong when Fermi emerged on the scene; in fact, it took some time before Fermi could even find an academic position, even when his brilliance was recognized. One gets a strong impression of backwardness and corruption in the Italy of the time.

As a former physicist (I earned a Ph.D. in physics in 1973, but then immediately left the field), and one who has read widely on physics and its recent history, I have known about many of the major figures in physics from those times. However, while I had heard of some of the Italian physicists and mathematicians, I confess that I did not know much about them. This book filled in some of these holes in my knowledge about Segre, Amaldi, Majorana, Levi-Civita, and others, and introduced me to some I had not formerly heard of -- Rasetti, for example.

The book filled in a lot of details about the development of nuclear physics, and in particular the contributions of Fermi, which were indeed considerable, as I knew. It was good to gain a greater understanding of how considerable his contributions were.

I was particularly impressed by how the book described the complexity of the man. Fermi seems to have been a calculating genius, incredible teacher, hugely knowledgeable about physics, while at the same time to be a warm human being with a great sense of humor, and one who hiked with great stamina and played tennis with great tenacity. A record eight of his graduate students have won Nobel prizes, so clearly he had great influence. But of course, his reputation encouraged the best young physicists in the world to enter his sphere. Another aspect of his character was that he was very apolitical, and had an aversion to entering the world of politics and even national science policy, even though he was heavily involved. He was said to have not been involved in scientific organizations that were set up after Hiroshima to influence responsible international uses of nuclear energy, preferring to focus on research into physics. However, I found the following section of the book to be enlightening (pp. 266-7)

Although advancing science was always Fermi's driving force, he was optimistic that the progress along these paths would eventually benefit society as a whole. In fielding questions such as "What does it matter?" about the development of new tools, he answered as follows in a 1952 speech at the University of Rochester:

The history of science and technology has consistently taught us that scientific advances in basic understanding have sooner or later led to technical and industrial applications that have revolutionized our way of life. It seems to me improbable that this effort to get at the structure of matter should be an exception to this rule.

Remembering also how physics had contributed to the development of weapons, Fermi concluded with a warning for his audience, "What is less certain, and what we all fervently hope, is that man will soon grow sufficiently adult to make good use of the powers that he acquires over nature." It is probably as close a Fermi ever got to imparting a moral and cautionary message regarding scientific advances.

Given recent history, I have to say that we are not doing well on either point.

All in all, I highly recommend this book. It is a very positive biography of an impressive genius who was, by all accounts, a warm and responsible human being who lived through the difficult times of the 20th century. Admittedly, there are sections that detail the physics with which Fermi was involved, but I feel that laymen should be able to read those sections with some reasonable level of understanding.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher, via LibraryThing, in exhange for an honest review.

I was attracted to this book because it purportedly tells the story of Enrico Fermi as he participated in the birth of the atomic age, rather than being a straight biography. While you do get enough biography to get a better understanding of Fermi, you also get a lot of general history with it.

I was hoping for a lot of information on Fermi and the creation of CP-1, and I wasn't totally disappointed. The idea of the world's first functioning nuclear pile, built under an abandoned football stadium seems like it should be apocryphal, but turns out to be totally true. The book didn't really bring anything new to this story, but it did present it in a neat, cohesive manner.

I would only say the first third or so of the book is a straight biography. The book then morphs into a narrative of the scientific discoveries leading up to the Manhattan Project. This part of the book cannot compare with numerous other books written on the subject (Richard Rhodes comes to mind). This part of the book isn't bad, in fact, it would probably suit most readers who are new to the subject. If you have already explored other titles in the same vein, you may get bored.

The section on Fermi at Los Alamos could have been a lot more interesting than it was. As I read, I couldn't help but think "where is Fermi and what is he doing," as the authors gave general overviews of some of the work that went on there during the war.

Overall, you do get a good bit of history just focusing on Fermi himself. Either by accident or by design, the rest of the book becomes a general history of nuclear physics and the Manhattan Project. This may not be a bad choice for the casual reader, but I must admit I was bored through a great deal of it.

[Thom · Rating 4 out of 5]

A biography of the brilliant physicist Enrico Fermi, from Italy to America to the Atom Bomb and beyond. Not particularly a science work, enough basics are covered to get the gist of his genius.

The first third focuses on his time in Italy, especially his time with a research group of physicists (the Via Panisperna Boys). Each had nicknames; the infallible Fermi was known as "Il Papa", or The Pope. They were supported well by the fascist government, though that also led to him leaving the country for good on the eve of World War II. His physics research in Italy led to a Nobel Prize.

The majority of the book focuses on his time in America, researching and then creating the first atomic reactor on a squash court in Chicago. This was really interesting reading, and was contrasted with German failures to achieve the same goal. Fear of their possible success led to the Manhattan project. That threat, revelation, and post war continuation were also well written.

Fermi had a large contribution to the Hanford location (site W), but the only story from this time is discovering the cause of reactor cycling (neutron poisoning from xenon-135). The post-war years are a very short section of the book, mostly his work with the Atomic Energy Commission. His work on cosmic radiation and the contradiction about the existence of extraterrestrial life (the Fermi Paradox) get only a few lines each.

In general, a well written work. One author is the nephew of Fermi colleague Emilio Segrè, the other is his wife. He has written other works of scientific history, and I'll probably keep an eye out for them. I read this book in 2023, and have not yet seen the popular movie Oppenheimer; I imagine Enrico Fermi will have a part to play in it.

[Oren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disappointing. Co-written by a physicist, Emilio Segre's son, it's clear the authors decided early on to remove all actual physics and chemistry from the book. They didn't even mention by name the "three methods for separating U-238 from U-235"..

The writing is fine. It flows. And Fermi is a good subject, but I just couldn't get past what was missing from the book. You're much better off reading The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes or Uranium Wars by Amir Aczel.

[Veronica · Rating 5 out of 5]

It immediately became one of my favorite books and I can't wait to read it again. It has the perfect balance between biography elements and science. As a scientist, there were many things I didn't know or remember about Fermi's contributions to the atomic age and physics, in general. Deeply inspiring, it made me want to go back to the lab in a heartbeat, and reminded me of all the reasons that made me decide to become a scientist <3

[Charlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh how I wish I had read this book right before reading The Quantum Labyrinth: How Richard Feynman and John Wheeler Revolutionized Time and Reality. It would have been the reading experience of the year! Reading it after Wheeler and Feynman made me miss so many things I could have thought more about if I had read this book first. Feynman idolized Fermi and after reading this book, which detailed Fermi's life, his discoveries, and even his political views, it is clear to understand why . I think anyone interested in physics cannot help but idolize Fermi.

Oddly enough, when reading about Fermi, I cannot help but think of how a receptor and ligand on the membrane of a cell act. The downstream signal created by the pairing of the receptor and ligand recruit other molecules to the receptor. The action the molecules take inside a cell can lead to huge changes within the cell or within a larger multicellular body. Similarly, if you have ever seen the movie field of dreams, the main character kept hearing a voice that said, "If you build it, they will come." He built the baseball field and all the players were magically recruited to that field. These two scenes, molecules being recruited to action inside a cell and the voice from Field of Dreams, played in my head on repeat as I read about the actions Fermi took to bring physicist from all over the country together to create a network of curious minds who would help humans gain a better understanding of the world and larger universe. If you build it, they will come. Fermi built it and they came! And, it was glorious! Building the network that Fermi worked so hard to create was not an easy task. In order to gather and disseminate knowledge, so much had to occur! Fermi's papers had to be translated into other languages to get rid of the language barrier that kept many physicists from understanding each other's work. He created institutes and lectures to attract other minds interested in the problems in physics. Fermi had to seek out funding in a time when funding was not as easy to come by (he found out where Mussolini would be, went there, and made a successful pitch that led to significant funding of his seminal work). To make the discovery that protons transformed into neutrons in fusion or that neutrons bombard the nucleus of an atom in fission, Fermi had to build different devices, like the device that could shoot alpha particles (what a thrill to imagine building the device and carrying out the experiments).

To think that all of these discoveries were going on at a time when people were being oppressed and killed, makes these discoveries even more unimaginable. Fermi was married to a Jewish woman and had Jewish children. He did his very best to help Jewish scientists escape by securing them jobs in America.

This book deserves a better review than I can give it, but if you read it, you won't be sorry. I try not to idolize people like others idolize god, but sometimes people are so great that I can't help it. The Pope of Physics indeed! I bow down at the Fermi alter.

[Terry · Rating 3 out of 5]

To call Enrico Fermi a genius is almost an insult. He was a mind to whom the world emerged if not effortlessly at least effortlessly compared to most other humans who have ever lived. The book tracks the journey of this mind from Italy through Fascism, into the United States before and during World War II followed by the brief life that followed.

The book shed light on a part of Fermi's career I was unfamiliar with, his time in Italy. His early academic work as well as what the Italian academic environment was like were covered in enough detail to get an appropriate amount of flavor. The period on the descent of Fascism was compelling and is a part of the Fermi story that's normally skipped over and just replaced with a "Fermi goes to America". Finally, the book does a good job of conveying the drive with which Fermi took to being an American. The hobbies he took up, the affectations he cultivated, the culture he consumed to be more like a person from the country he so admired. It was heart-warming.

Although the book did wonderfully at Fermi the man, I feel like there was some work left to be done on Fermi the scientist. I don't feel like the science of his breakthroughs was gone through in enough detail but I recognize not everyone will be in that camp.

[Noah Goats · Rating 5 out of 5]

If this was just the story of Fermi's scientific achievements it would be a fascinating book, but the dramatic backdrops provided by the rise of Italian fascism and then the Manhattan Project give this biography of one of history's greatest physicists an edge of drama and danger. Segre and Hoerlin don't fall into the trap of so many modern biographers by bogging their book down with pointless details. This is a very tight 300 pages and none of them are boring.

[Garth · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I've read of a captivating and inspirational person.

The book was concise and well written. I, quite literally, couldn't stop reading it. Fermi was a complex personality and because of him America led the way in science and technology. He is, I believe, a tangible argument to immigration and naturalization arguments that are plaguing the nation currently. I say this coincides with the Fascist Trump movement on hatred of immigrants and the subversion and eventual dissolution of science, education and common sense and America's place in world technology. Stephen Hawkings once said, " Man's extinction will be a result of his stupidity and his greed."
The wealthy of this country are trying to destroy education by supporting religious fanaticism. It started when Truman gave black soldiers the same rights as white ones. This caused the "Dixiecrats" to adopt the ideology of the Republicans. We now have a class of science-denying fanatics who grow dumber and more fanatical day by day. The billionaire class LOVES these people because they are so gullible as to think that the government and the science-literate class are attacking their religion. It is the same tactic used by the tobacco industry and fossil fuel industry that worked so well in the last two decades.
Rich people want a slave class. They want people who are too scared of losing their jobs regardless of how little they're paid or how sick they get. Science allows us to have better medicines, better research to cure diseases and the unsavoury bit, better weapons of mass destruction. Science is a two-edged sword but it really depends on who gets to wield it; the avaricious billionaires who see only profits or the people who collectively have the most to gain (if used intelligently) or the most to lose (if used with fanatic hatred and stupidity...) Dumb people are easy to control. Give them religion so they won't skin the rich and destroy their ability to get higher education so they can't tell how badly they are being screwed. This country was built on the backs of immigrants over the graves of the First People. We can do so many marvelous things if we just can understand that one fact. Accept people who are different. Accept those who might have a different point of view. We all have our stories and our learned wisdom and experiences. As Gran said, "Ye canna break a stick in a bundle". If we all pull together as a species we could have paradise...

[Héctor Iván Patricio Moreno · Rating 4 out of 5]

La principal lección del libro es: nadie puede servir a dos amos. Su búsqueda de cosas grandes en la física lo separó de todo lo demás, de su familia, de la ética y los dilemas morales. Esto le permitió avanzar a grados increíbles en la física, pero limitó su crecimiento en todo lo demás.

Es un libro muy inspirador sobre la vida de un hombre que tuvo una gran influencia en el mundo moderno, del que no nos hemos puesto de acuerdo si para bien o para mal.
Me llevo sus cualidades para imitar:

- Trabajo duro y constante
- Pasión por los datos y los cálculos
- Imperturbabilidad
- Buscar calcular cómo van a funcionar las cosas
- Combinación del trabajo intelectual con el trabajo físico
- Gusto por la enseñanza

Un lado oscuro que muestra de él es el distanciamiento de su familia. Sin ese distanciamiento seguro no hubiera logrado nada cerca de lo que hizo, por lo que es algo a considerar con respecto a las metas en la vida. Además su poco interés en los asuntos éticos pudo haberlo llevado a la posición a la que está hoy en la imagen pública. Podemos aprender de sus virtudes e Intentar evitar sus errores.

[Tigran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very exciting story of a physicist who built 1st nuclear reactor and was the architect of the fist nuclear bomb.

There is much to learn for country leaders who want have strong science in their countries. At least don't make great scientist to leave.

Though I personally don't agree with his view that scientist should not worry about the use of their discoveries, his strong belief in a knowledge as a goal by itself is remarkable.

[Jonna Higgins-Freese · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was solidly interesting, but not a "wow" for me. I hadn't known anything about Fermi, though, so I was glad to learn.

Just two years ago, when I was at the Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago, I paused next to the historical marker that stands on the place where the first reactor went critical, in the old squash courts that were torn down to make room for the library. At that time I'd just finished a reading binge about the making of the bomb and its use, so it caught my attention. Even then, though I didn't know anything about Fermi.

Then today, when I had an xray, this paragraph came back to me (though obviously xrays and their use in medicine predate much of quantum physics): "What [Fermi, Heisenberg, and Pauli] did not know [in 1927] was that without understanding the Pauli Principle, quantum mechanics, and Fermi-Dirac statistics, the world would not have been able to produce semiconductors, transistors, computers, MRIs, lasers, and so many of the other inventions that shape our life. In a very real sense we live in a world they created" (55).

Given my interest in women in science, I was perhaps most interested in reading Fermi's wife Laura's work, and also learning more about Leona Woods Marshall, who was in at the beginning with the CP-1 pile. I also hadn't known about Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch, aunt and nephew, and that seems like an incredibly fascinating story (128).

[Robert S · Rating 3 out of 5]

"There is no democracy in physics. We can’t say that some second-rate guy has as much right to opinion as Fermi."
- Luis W. Alvarez

Before I came here I was confused about this subject. Having listened to your lecture I am still confused. But on a higher level."
- Enrico Fermi

The Pope of Physics is a straightforward biography about one of the most influential physicists to ever walk the face of this Earth, Enrico Fermi. It wouldn't be an understatement to say that Fermi helped shape not just the end of World War II but the rest of the 20th century and even the 21st century now with his work. Fermi is one of only sixteen scientists to have an element named after him, no small feat to say the least.

My only real issue with The Pope of Physics is a lot of the focus is on The Manhattan Project itself and the emergence of the nuclear age. Fermi often feels like a secondary character in his own biography when this time period is discussed. I would have loved to see more of a deeper focus on the man's work and influence on science today as we know it.

[Jeremy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A serviceable but unremarkable biography of the great physicist Enrico Fermi. I certainly learned things about Fermi, and this book is probably quite well-suited to the general reader who doesn't know much about nuclear physics or the Manhattan Project. The greatest weakness of the book are probably the long stretches where it seems to lose track of Fermi while it explains the broader history of the discovery of fission and the development of the atomic bomb. While I enjoyed the book, it really only whetted my appetite for learning more about the man who was its remarkable subject.

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a Physics teacher, I have my students do Fermi problems (as featured, for example, in "The Physics Teacher" publication). It was great to read such detail about his life, but in a format that kept me reading and wanting more.

[Chunyang Ding · Rating 3 out of 5]

An okay biography, but a little too driven on the idea of emphasizing "the pope".

[Edward Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An insightful, admiring biography of Fermi.

[Nick Black · Rating 2 out of 5]

in no way terrible, yet it definitely read like the ambitious research paper of a tenth grader. don't expect anything new if you already knew the basics of Fermi.

[Russell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly readable biography of Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, one of the last scientists to make Nobel-quality contributions to both theoretical and experimental physics. The husband-and-wife team of authors (who admit they both (separately) met Fermi, but neither remembers much of the encounter) do a great job of explaining Fermi's scientific work in enough detail so a lay reader can appreciate the ground-breaking nature of his discoveries, yet do not get bogged down in mathematical explanations. Their presentation of Fermi makes one feel they could have enjoyed talking with this great scientist.

[William Schram · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enrico Fermi was a brilliant Italian physicist. The Pope of Physics is a biography of Fermi’s life and times.

I didn’t realize Fermi was self-taught in many modern aspects of physics. I knew about the other things, though. I knew that he was a major player in the construction of the first atomic reactor. I heard a lot about his Fermi Method as well.

Gino Segrè and Bettina Hoerlin do a wonderful job. I enjoyed the book. Thanks for reading my review, and see you next time.

[Freca - Narrazioni da Divano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Come sempre una casa editrice che per la scienza (anche se qui in senso lato) è una garanzia: divulgazione precisa e puntuale.
La biografia di uno degli esponenti principali della fisica dello scorso secolo soprattutto noto per il suo coinvolgimento nel progetto Manhattan e quindi l'invenzione della bomba atomica. Viene ripercorsa la sua vita in toto, dove tutto - privato, pubblico, Storia, politica, fisica, accademia - ha lo stesso peso, si intreccia in un quadro sfaccettato che mostra la complessità del personaggio che si ritrova a vivere in un momento storico cruciale, avere la sua vita sconvolta dalle leggi razziali e poi dal coinvolgimento in uno dei progetti più devastanti ma intellettualmente stimolanti della storia dell' umanità. Il rapporto scienza-politica-etica accompagna tutte le discussioni del gruppo, frammentato in una miriade di punti di vista e sensibilità, anche se questo testo vuole essere una narrazione della vita e non un trattato filosofico la sua persona è inevitabilmente simbolo di questi dilemmi.
Consiglio di recuperare anche lo sceneggiato: i ragazzi di via Panisperna.

[Michael Baker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely enjoyed this book. I have read biographies and histories of several physicists from the early 20th century. For a reader who already appreciates Enrico Fermi’s contributions to physics, this book did a great job of helping one understand the man, while only lightly touching on the physics contributions.

[Scott Nvenue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fermi was responsible for creating the first sustained nuclear chain reaction. I have known that for a long time and have also known that Fermi was a very gifted physicist. However, this book revealed to me how special he was. This is a readable but thorough biography of Fermi, and I recommend it to anyone who wishes to learn about this unique scientist.

[Shlok Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly uplifting story showing a man that changed history the same way history changes man.
Lot of intersections with other atomic/quantum physicists and a strong implication toward improving ones intuition for better science.

[Mai Hoang Tri Dang · Rating 5 out of 5]

So với một số cuốn khác cùng tủ sách (Khoa học và Khám phá) thì đạt 4*. Chấm 5* để khuyến khích có thêm nhiều sách cùng thể loại phổ biến khoa học và cuộc đời các nhà khoa học kiệt xuất

[Nick Ziegler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my second Gino Segrè book (this time he joins his wife as cowriter) after Ordinary Geniuses. Segrè has become one of my favorite writers to read for pleasure. His unassuming style masks a responsible approach to historical questions that, nonetheless, would not overburden a non-specialist; and his knowledge as a physicist coupled with his communication skills make him an admirable interpreter of his discipline's history. Though historians of science, and historians more generally (NB: my degrees are in history) might begin skeptical of scientists writing their own histories, presupposing to find unreconstructed narratives of progress (gasp!) or inattentiveness to historical context (shock!) or other sins, Segrè is quite good. Creating books that are both popular histories and popular science texts which can also double as "beach reads" to be inhaled in one or two sittings is a pretty unique and admirable skill.

Because Segrè and Hoerlin's book is so readable, it is important to maintain a certain distance, especially when we deal with issues as weighty as nuclear weapons. The authors certainly do not shy away from the complicated political and moral questions, and leave a great room for ambivalence. In particular, they are far more credulous of the argument for the Manhattan Project (Germany might be developing a bomb, and it's important that Germany not get there first) than for any subsequent weapons research. However, because this is meant to softly lionize Fermi, there is some hemming and hawing over his complicity. His apolitical nature, as portrayed in this book, leads him into some uncomfortable positions. Indeed, that he was willing to accept money from Mussolini and join the fascist party, only to leave when race laws affected him directly; that he enthusiastically pursued nuclear weapons and even after their use was disinclined to join other physicists in raising the world-historical moral issues that use engendered; that he was in all cases chasing research money for his own curiosity and proferred rather sophistical arguments about how "the secrets of nature" can't be repressed and will be instrumentalized; these all point to, in a less charitable interpretation, a degree of perhaps criminal opportunism in his career.

For the authors, Fermi's greatness as a physicist stands as something of an apologia for the caesurae of Fermi's vision. However, they take the rather easy road of making Edward Teller a villain of the piece, metynomically bearing the guilt of the physics profession in general. And while it is fair to hold Teller responsible for his cold warrior jingoism, his callousness to the horrors of the hydrogen bomb, and his persecution of Oppenheimer, Fermi and others are certainly guilty of some of these charges as well. To underwrite this maneuver, the authors are rather disparaging or dismissive of Teller's powers as a physicist himself. This play calls into question the whole idea of special scientific powers buying redemption for complicity in something as momentous as the use of atomic weapons.

I don't mean to suggest that the authors are awful on the moral and historical repercussions of the advent of the atomic age. They every bit earn the subtitle of their book, and this is not a simple hagiography. But it would be asking too much of any book, let alone a book so likeable and readable, to fully address the question of how we are to process the 20th century's atomic legacy. But this book is a great place to start looking for answers to to flesh out one's investigations with memorable and responsibly cited anecdotes about the personalities involved and their conflicted commitments.

[Aiman Adlawan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I used to hear about Enrico Fermi's name when I grab a book about nuclear physics. So i decided to read this biography of him. It was a great story about Fermi and his life and his passion in physics and most of all his career as a physicist who was one of the pioneers of the atomic bombs. Very great story.

[Sandor J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

First Rate Biography of the Man that Built the First Nuclear Reactor

It's all here--science, politics, the turning of history, and the ushering in of the nuclear age, from the perspective of the life and career in one of the many men that made it possible. Great read for anyone interested in the atomic bomb, Italian fascism, American politics, and science in general.

[Robert Koslowsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Be sure to read Segre and Hoerlin’s book, The Pope of Physics (2016), about the famous Italian-became-American physicist, Enrico Fermi. Fermi, Werner Heisenberg, and Wolfgang Pauli knew they had already produced a revolution in physics early in the twentieth century. As the authors write, “What they did not know was that without understanding the Pauli Principle, quantum mechanics, and Fermi-Dirac statistics, the world would not have been able to produce semiconductors, transistors, computers, MRIs, lasers, and so many other inventions that shape our life. In a very real sense we live in a world they created.”

After Fermi came to America, he was intimately involved in the success of the American production of the atomic bomb and the resulting post-World War II research programs. “After ten years of intense work on neutron physics,” Segre and Hoerlin write, “Fermi was thrilled to be exposed to wide-ranging ideas. He was freer to explore fields related to other aspects of bomb research.”

Fermi felt that war, in general, was determined “more by will than by weapons, by leadership rather than technical advances.” He preferred to deal with the science and not with any associated policy issues resulting from advancing knowledge in the field of physics.

“The Pope’s” most famous contributions to physics “were not leaps into the unknown. In the case of neutron bombardment, he had simply been searching for a projectile that could penetrate the nucleus unperturbed. As for Fermi’s weak interaction theory, it came by looking for how quantum field theory could explain the nagging experimental question of missing energy in beta decay.” The authors add, “Fermi’s incremental approach to physics kept him far more relevant than any of the great theoretical physicists he had admired in his youth. Now physics was looking to experiments for indications of its future and Fermi was the only physicist to combine being a great experimentalist with being a great theorist.”

In 1952, Fermi, in looking back at the first half of the twentieth century, said, “The history of science and technology has consistently taught us that scientific advances in basic understanding have sooner or later led to technical and industrial applications that have revolutionized our way of life. It seems to me improbable that this effort to get at the structure of matter should be an exception to this rule . . . What is less certain, and what we all fervently hope, is that man will soon grow sufficiently adult to make use of the powers that he acquires over nature.”

Indeed, advances in science need to be used for the common good of all humanity.