Manhattan Project Scientists: Enrico Fermi

Born in Rome, Italy in 1901, Fermi received his PhD in Physics from the University of Pisa in 1922. In 1927, he became Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Rome. It was here in 1934 that Fermi and his colleagues split uranium without fully realizing it, researched nuclear transformation, and discovered slow neutrons, which aided in the discovery of nuclear fission. For these efforts, Fermi won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938. That same year, to escape fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini, Fermi and his family left for the United States.

In 1942, Fermi developed the Chicago Pile (CP-1) at the University of Chicago. An experimental nuclear reactor, CP-1 went critical on December 2, 1942. After this breakthrough, Fermi was recruited by J. Robert Oppenheimer to be associate director at Los Alamos. Fermi was the first person to insert a uranium slug into the B Reactor at Hanford. He was present when the X-10 Graphite Reactor went critical at Oak Ridge and witnessed the Trinity test in the New Mexico desert.

After the war, Fermi became a professor at the University of Chicago, dying of stomach cancer in 1954.