Enrico Fermi: The Creation Of The Atomic Bomb

Without the works of many--in particular Enrico Fermi--the creation of the atomic bomb would’ve been a milestone achieved after World War II, if it were to end by 1945. The research of Fermi and others allowed him to conduct experiments that lead to the creation of the atomic pile--the original name for a nuclear reactor--and the first controlled nuclear chain reaction, which tremendously aided the Manhattan Project, a U.S. government project which led to the creation of the atomic bomb. As a physicist, his contributions were a catalyst for other important discoveries throughout his field.

Born in Rome, Italy on September 29, 1901, to Alberto Fermi and Ida de Gattis, Enrico Fermi’s interest in science and math were encouraged by a family

friend. The older he got, the greater his interest grew and he was awarded a scholarship to the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa receiving his doctorate in physics at the tender age of 21. Years later, he was named the Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Rome and with a group of young physicists, known as Corbino’s Boys, he was to aid with vital contributions to the field of physics. In 1926, Fermi discovered statistical laws, also known as Fermi-Dirac statistics, a law that’s obeyed by a system of particles whose wave function changes when two particles are interchanged in relation to Pauli’s exclusion principle, a quantum mechanical principle that states that, in an atom or molecule, no two electrons can have the same four electronic quantum numbers. The particles are known as fermions in comparison to bosons, the particles associated with Bose-Einstein statistics.
During the 1930’s, Fermi began a plethora of experiments by directing high-energy particles, such as neutrons, against different elements. This allowed Fermi to prove that a nuclear transformation happens in almost every element subject to the conditions aforementioned, leading to the splitting of uranium, however, Fermi and his team were unaware of this. At the time, he was also working with other European physicists at the University of Rome primarily on the theory of the atomic structure. Soon after he turned his focus to the field of theoretical and experimental nuclear physics and developed his theory about b-ray emission, also known as beta decay, which led to evidence that supported the existence of the neutrino, the neutral particles produced during beta decay.