“The racial campaign… acquired momentum at an amazingly fast pace,” wrote Laura Fermi. “We at once decided to leave Italy as soon as possible.” Her husband, Enrico, was the pride of Italian physics, one of the foremost experts on both theoretical and experimental nuclear physics in the world. But with Italy unsafe for the family of a Catholic man and a Jewish woman, Enrico and Laura quietly made plans to leave. Their plans were complicated by Mussolini’s fascist economic policy, which made it illegal to take more than pocket change out of Italy. Then Niels Bohr intervened. When Fermi came to
...more
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
