FERMI, ENRICO

born Sept. 29, 1901, Rome, Italy died Nov. 28, 1954, Chicago, Ill., U.S. Enrico Fermi at the controls of the synchrocyclotron at the University of Chicago, 1951. Italian-born American physicist who was one of the chief architects of the nuclear age. He developed the mathematical statistics required to clarify a large class of subatomic phenomena, discovered neutron-induced radioactivity, and directed the first controlled chain reaction involving nuclear fission. He was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize for Physics, and the Enrico Fermi Award of the U.S. Department of Energy is given in his honour. Additional reading Biographies include Laura Fermi, Atoms in the Family (1954, reprinted 1987), written by Enrico's wife; Emilio Segr, Enrico Fermi: Physicist (1970), by his earliest and closest collaborator; and Pierre de Latil, Enrico Fermi: The Man and His Theories (1966), a brief survey. Gerald Holton, Fermi's Group and the Recapture of Italy's Place in Physics, in his The Scientific Imagination: Case Studies (1978), pp. 155198, treats Fermi's laboratory and research circle.