Professor Enrico Fermi, c mid-20th century

Enrico Fermi, born 29 September 1901, died 28 November 1954, was an Italian and naturalised American physicist who is known for his work on the Manhattan Project. Fermi is also known for being the creator of the world's first artificial nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1. Fermi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on induced radioactivity. In 1918, he went to the Scuola Normale Superiore, and studied physics, and received his doctorate in 1922, aged 20. Between 1923-24, he studied for a semester under Max Born at the University of Göttingen. Fermi then obtained a professorship at the Sapienza University of Rome. He married Laura Capon in 1928, and had two children. Fermi was appointed a member of the Royal Academy of Italy by Mussolini, and in April 1929, Fermi joined the Fascist Party. He later opposed Fascism after Mussolini created racial laws to bring Italian Fascism closer to German Nazism. Fermi left Italy in 1938, after these new Italian Racial Laws discriminated against his wife, Laura Capon, who was Jewish. He worked on the Manhattan Project during WWII, and was present at the Trinity test in 1945, the first test nuclear bomb explosion. After WWII, he established the Institute for Nuclear Studies in Chicago and served on the General Advisory Committee that was chaired by J. Robert Oppenheimer. Fermi was also elected as a member of the US National Academy of Sciences in 1945. Fermi died of inoperable stomach cancer in 1954, aged 53. He believed this cancer was caused by working next to the nuclear pile, but felt the benefits to science outweighed his personal safety. Fermi received innumerable awards in his life, principally, the Franklin Medal in 1947, the Rumford Prize in 1953, the Medal for Merit in 1946, and was also a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1939, and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1950.