By Minnie Soo 蘇慧音 Father of the Nuclear Age 恩里科．費米：核子時代之父 Enrico Fermi: The 20th century was a golden era for physics, with brilliant minds pushing the boundaries of scientific innovation. Prominent physicists include Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, Richard Feynman, and one must not forget the legendary Enrico Fermi, a giant in the history of nuclear physics. When we think of the word “Fermi”, a whole array of related notions comes to mind. Fermilab, a renowned scientific institution dedicated to the study of particle physics; fermions, particles with an odd half-integer spin such as electrons; Fermi’s Paradox, a perplexing conundrum which challenges the possibilities of existence of extraterrestrial life. The use of such nomenclature highlights Fermi’s contributions and status in the scientific community. Enrico Fermi and the Atomic Bomb Enrico Fermi is a consequential contributor to the atomic bomb launched on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was burdened with no less responsibility than J. Robert Oppenheimer, the leading scientist in the Manhattan Project [1]. The story started with racial discrimination in Fascist Italy. In 1938, the establishment of antisemitic policies by Mussolini [2] posed a significant threat to Fermi particularly because his wife is of Jewish heritage [3, 4]. When Fermi was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics at the age of 37, he took this opportunity to go directly from Stockholm, the place where he received the award, to the United States and never returned to Italy [5, 6]. In the summer of 1939, Fermi met Heisenberg in a lecture tour in the States, during which he tried to convince Heisenberg to join him at the physics faculty of Columbia University [7]. However, to his bafflement, Heisenberg decided to head back and serve the Nazi’s project to build an atomic bomb [7]. Disappointment in this unsuccessful recruitment has evolved into a fear that, with the great mind of Heisenberg, the Nazis would succeed in developing the atomic bomb and win the war. While the scientists in the US were making continuous efforts to alert the government to the destructive power that uranium fission chain reactions could bring [8], they teamed up to push forward the progress of uranium research [9]. In 1942, Fermi successfully initiated the first controlled chain reaction of nuclear fission [6]. As World War II progressed, Fermi joined the Manhattan Project as an associate director in Los Alamo [1, 4]. In three years, the first atomic
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