Fermi, the Italian: Getting to Trinity

How did in enRico Fermi get into science? In the last Man who knew everything, David Schwartz writes he was walking down the street with an engineer friend of his father during the summer of 1914. The 14-year-old wants to talk about mathematics and science, and the engineer realizes the boy ''has a gift'' and he begins to teach him college math. Young Fermi saw math as a path go physics, which he was reading vociferously, having already even at that young age found Einstein's groundbreaking papers. The math would hold him in good stead

On his honeymoon he schooled his wife Laura in Maxwell's equations. After their wedding they settled in Rome and the daily routine. [Page 72]. He would rise at 5:30 in the morning, go into his study for two hours work at whatever physics problem he was trying to solve. This would end at exactly 7:30 and he'd prepare for the day. He was a professor running a big physics lab. One that held Italy's hopes to gain equal footing with Germany and England in the hot new science. He' take lunch, formal, no matter the intensity of the research, and this method continued into his work in later in the U.S.A. He'd be in bed by 10pm.

This firm schedule led a friend to call him a bureaucrat. Others said the precise schedule of his life was reflected in his style of thinking.

He was the acknowledged leader of physicists who came to be known as The Rome Group. He did work in statistical mechanics explaining the behavior of electrons in metal. This led to a study of beta radiation.

His departure from Italy - he was being watched by Mussollinni's agents -- was in some part driven by Anti-Jewish laws - He was Catholic - his wife was Jewish, and eventually some of her family were interred by Germans. TBC. - J. Vaughan

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