November 28, 1954 – Death of Enrico Fermi, the Nobel Prize who achieved the first nuclear chain reaction

Italian physicist who went down in history for being the first to carry out the first self-sustained nuclear fission and for having devised the first mathematical method capable of describing the behaviour of certain types of subatomic particles.

Fermi specialised in physics, obtaining his doctorate in 1922 with a thesis on X-rays.

He studied at the University of Göttingen (Germany), where he broadened his knowledge with Max Born, one of the greatest scientists of quantum mechanics; at the University of Leiden (Netherlands), where he continued his research in the field of nuclear physics; and at the University of Florence, where he began to acquire prestige and fame, especially after he enunciated the so-called ‘Fermi-Dirac statistics’ in 1926.

Over time, the importance of this work on quantum statistics led to these particles being called fermions, in contrast to the bosons of the so-called ‘Bose-Einstein statistics’.

In 1933, he published his theory of radioactive beta decay, according to which a neutron emits an electron (ß-particle) and an antineutrino to become a proton. Soon after James Chadwick discovered the neutron, the Joliot-Curie couple discovered artificial radioactivity and were able to form new isotopes by bombarding various substances with alpha particles. Fermi reflected on both findings and deduced that the neutron, lacking an electric charge, might be a more suitable projectile than alpha particles for this type of bombardment; he then moved on to the experimental phase and, using slow neutrons which he had managed to slow down with paraffin, he bombarded sixty chemical elements and was able to generate forty new isotopes.

During that decade he not only disseminated his knowledge in the United States, but also in Europe and South America, which allowed him to surround himself with a team of great collaborators with whom he was able to analyse in depth the delay experienced by the neutron in hydrogenated materials. In addition, he carried out an extensive study of a large number of artificially radioactive substances, all produced by the capture of slow neutrons by atomic nuclei, obtaining a series of important data on radioactivity such as the discovery of nuclear reactions by bombardment with slow neutrons, This led him to receive, at the age of 40, the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938 for demonstrating the existence of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation and for the discovery of nuclear reactions by bombardment with slow neutrons.

In 1939, due to the political situation in Italy, he decided to emigrate to the United States, where he became a professor of physics at the prestigious Columbia University (New York). It was there that he received news of the discovery of uranium fission by Otto Hahn and Friedrich Strassman, and began to study it in depth because he saw the possibility of achieving the emission of secondary neutrons and thus giving rise to a chain reaction.

Surrounded by his new team of over 40 scientists, he succeeded in building the first nuclear reactor, called Chicago Pile-1, with which on December 2, 1942, in a laboratory at the University of Chicago, he managed to produce the first controlled nuclear chain reaction.

In honor of his memory, not only were the particles named fermions after him, but the chemical element number 100 on the periodic table is also named fermium.

If you want to know more about this scientist, click on the following link: Enrico Fermi