The authors did an excellent job in bringing these years to life. I was most interested in the descriptions of life in Italy from 1900 to 1939. Fermi was one of the greats in the field of physics at a time of many great men such as Lawrence, Oppenheimer and Einstein. Segre and Hoerlin do a great job of bringing Fermi to life in an easily readable fashion.
The book is well written and meticulously researched. Fermi became a professor at Columbia University in New York City, then the University of Chicago and also worked on the Manhattan project.
They fled Italy and its fascism and anti-Semitism just prior to World War II. Winning this award allowed the Fermi family to go to Stockholm, Sweden and from there they escaped to the United States. He won the Nobel Prize in 1938 in physics for his work on artificial radioactivity produced by neutrons. Fermi’s discoveries covered a broad range from semiconductors, transistors to MRI’s, nuclear reactors to the atomic bomb. He is Italy’s greatest scientist since Galileo. This is a biography of Enrico Fermi (1901- 1954). An examination of the human dramas that touched Fermi’s life as well as a thrilling history of scientific innovation in the twentieth century, this is the comprehensive biography that Fermi deserves. In their revealing book, The Pope of Physics, Gino Segré and Bettina Hoerlin bring this scientific visionary to life. His rich legacy encompasses key advances in fields as diverse as comic rays, nuclear technology, and early computers. The last physicist who mastered all branches of the discipline, Fermi was a rare mixture of theorist and experimentalist. Fleeing Fascism and anti-Semitism, Fermi became a leading figure in America's most secret project: building the atomic bomb.
This unassuming man struggled with issues relevant today, such as the threat of nuclear annihilation and the relationship of science to politics. His discoveries changed our world they led to weapons of mass destruction and conversely to life-saving medical interventions. Called the Pope by his peers, he was regarded as infallible in his instincts and research. Enrico Fermi is unquestionably among the greats of the world's physicists, the most famous Italian scientist since Galileo.
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