Enrico Fermi

Fermi was born in Rome on September 29, 1901. He was the third child of a railway supervisor and a school teacher. Enrico and his brother, Guilio, spent most of their time reading about many different scientific theories.When his brother died from the anesthetic for an operation, Enrico withdrew from the world and into the books on which he and his brother spent so much time. Later, he and his brother's friend, Enrico Persico, were sharing conversations about science. Through this friendship, they created a theory on the spinning top. By 17, Fermi had started studying at the university in Galileo. He gained his doctorate before he was 21.

Fermi was intrigued by quantum and wave mechanics and, like some other physicists of the time, was deeply involved with the mathematics (other famous mathematician/physicist) that explained the behavior of molecules and atoms. His researched led him to investigate radioactivity with a group of scientists studying the effect of neutron bombardment on atoms. In 1934, he published a paper on the creation of artificial radioactivity.

As the anti-Semitic fevor began to spread across Europe, Fermi decided to move to the United States because he feared for his wife who was Jewish. By the summer of 1938, they were getting passports and arranging for a trip to the U.S. As they were preparing to move, he learned that he had won the Nobel prize for physics.

On August 2, 1939, Einstein signed a letter to FDR noting the importance of the work that Fermi was doing with atoms. With government backing, Fermi took charge of the Manhattan project which created the first self-sustaining nucular reaction in December 1942. Through that explosion, Fermi brought the world into the nucular age.