Books - (subject:fermi)and(subject:biography)

Product Description:
In this absorbing account of life with the great atomic scientist Enrico Fermi, Laura Fermi tells the story of their emigration to the United States in the 1930s--part of the widespread movement of scientists from Europe to the New World that was so important to the development of the first atomic bomb. Combining intellectual biography and social history, Laura Fermi traces her husband's career from his childhood, when he taught himself physics, through his rise in the Italian university system concurrent with the rise of fascism, to his receipt of the Nobel Prize, which offered a perfect opportunity to flee the country without arousing official suspicion, and his odyssey to the United States.



Customer Review: Easy Read and Informative:
This was a fairly easy book to read. It was more of a personal account of what life was like for Fermi and his family. Not too technical, but still enjoyable.

Customer Review: An endearing portrait of a giant of science:
Enrico Fermi was a supremely talented scientist of the twentieth century, perhaps the only scientist who was uniquely accomplished in both experimental and theoretical physics. Fermi contributed massively to almost every branch of modern physics, and almost any one of his discoveries would have been enough to win him a Nobel Prize. In this book, his wife Laura Fermi affectionately and engagingly tells us the story of this singular individual and his all-consuming passion for physics.

Laura brings a personal touch to the great man's life that is rarely seen. This is especially valuable for someone like Fermi who was a rather private individual and not fond of talking about personal matters. Laura recounts Fermi's childhood and background, including his taking refuge in physics after a personal tragedy in which his brother and best friend Giulio died when he was 15. After this incident Fermi's life trajectory was set. He quickly rose through the ranks to become Professor of Physics at Rome. Laura describes their meeting and how she was wonderstruck by the intellect and unassuming nature of the young man. She endearingly describes their time together in Italy during a decade that was very important and exciting for the development of modern physics.

Much of the book's appeal comes from personal glimpses into Fermi's personal life as well as his and Laura's life in the United States after they fled from Mussolini's anti-Semitism (Laura was Jewish). Laura describes the remarkable discoveries Fermi made in Rome with neutrons, his enduring friendship with other extraordinary scientists and their migration to America. She has amusing stories about adjusting in the United States and about Fermi's singularly important work on the Manhattan Project. She describes the great secrecy during the project because of which Fermi could not tell her earlier about what was probably his greatest achievement- the construction of the world's first nuclear reactor, a watershed in world history. She also tells us about amusing aspects of life in the secret and remarkable community of Los Alamos, where there was an entire division created just for Fermi. Accompanying all these stories are anecdotes about the great physicists of the century, most of whom Fermi personally knew well and who respected him tremendously for his knowledge and modesty.

All things considered, this is a rare glimpse into the life of a most extraordinary scientist provided by someone who personally knew him as well or better than anyone could. It is a very valuable book and deserves an important place in the history of physics.

Customer Review: Atoms in the Family:
Excellent book. Very well written, especially considering that it was written in English by a non-native speaker of the language. Regardless of the writing, it tells a story that had largely been kept secret from my husband, even though he received a university degree in Physics. He has found substantial confirmation of what Laura Fermi wrote in several books by Emilio Segre, and at many Web sites.

Customer Review: This is the report I wrote from this book!!!:
Wrote by Doogie Ortonward
Did you wonder what stopped world war 2? Well I helped end it I'm Enrico Fermi the inventor of the nuclear pile. I was born Sep 29,1901 In Rome Italy. When I was born my mom sent me and my brother (Giulio) to live with nurses, because she did not have enough money to take care of me properly.
But took me back home when I was two 1/2. I had one sister and one brother, Maria and Giulio. I was the oldest of the bunch. Then I started elementary school when I was 6. Soon I got to be at the top of my class. I stared studying algebra in 5th grade from the books I loaned from my dads co-worker milder. Milder and my dad both worked at the ministry of communication. my mom worked at the elementary school. But soon a tragic event struck my family. My brother Giulio died of a throat abscess I was a young age of 14. so I would not think about his death I immersed my self in to scientific study. I thing that all still stays stuck in my mind I always walked by the hospital where he had died for so long in till the I got inured by the pain of his death. Now I'm in high school and the 3rd year I had skipped. Now the adventure was just beginning, off to the Scuola Normale Superiore (University of Pisa) at the young age of 17. After four years studying at the University of Pisa, I was awarded his doctorate in physics in 1922.
For the next several years, I worked with some of the greatest physicists in Europe, including Max Born(Physicist) and Paul Ehrenfest(mathematician), while also teaching at the University of Florence and then at the University of Rome.
Then I Got married to Laura Capon in 1928 , soon giving birth to Nella 3 years later. In 1934, I came up with the idea to use neutrons, which have no charge, as projectiles. I would shoot a neutron like an arrow into an atom's nucleus. Many of these nuclei absorbed the extra neutron during this process, creating isotopes for every element. For the next member in my family is Giulio in 1936. He was named after my brother that had died in 1915.
Though it doesn't seem to make sense, I found that by slowing down the neutron, it often had a larger impact on the nucleus. I found that the speed at which the neutron was most impacted differed for every element. For these two discoveries about atoms, I was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1938.

The timing was just right for the Nobel Prize. Antisemitism was strengthening within Italy at this time and though I was not Jewish, my wife was. I accepted the Nobel Prize in Stockholm and then immediately immigrated to the United States. He arrived in the U.S. in 1939 and began working at Columbia University in New York City as a professor of physics.

I continued his research at Columbia University. Though I had unknowingly split a nucleus during his earlier experiments, credit for splitting an atom (fission) was given to Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in 1939. However, I quickly realized that if you split an atom's nucleus, that atom's neutrons could be used as projectiles to split another atom's nucleus, causing a nuclear chain reaction. Each time a nucleus was split, an enormous amount of energy was released.

During World War II, I worked diligently on the Manhattan Project to create an atomic bomb. After the war, however, he believed the human death toll from these bombs was too large. In 1946, I worked as a professor at the University of Chicago's Institute of Nuclear Studies. In 1949, I argued against the development of a hydrogen bomb. It was built anyway.

On November 29, 1954, I succumbed to stomach cancer at the age of 53.

Then they named the 100th element after me, Fermium.



Customer Review: Living with Enrico!:
On first glance the title of this book appears to be a play on the ADDAMS FAMILY TV series. However, this book was originally published in 1952 and the TV series didn't come out until a decade later. However, there was apparently a newspaper cartoon that the TV series was based on, and that dates back to the 1930s. Whether Mrs. Fermi made a conscious pun or not I don't know. Would be a bizarre nexus between the Addams family & the great Enrico Fermi, but.....

In any case, this book is a biography of Enrico Fermi, who was the greatest Italian physicist of the 20th century. He was probably the greatest Italian scientist since Galileo Galilei. Fermi was in charge of the first team to successfully unleash a controlled nuclear reaction. Also, one major type of photon (the "Fermion") is named after him [the other major type of photon is the "Boson"].

One of the nice things about having a non-scientist (in this case, his wife) write the biography is that we get to see the man "behind the equations." Laura Fermi describes his quirks and we also find out that he had a sense-of-humor almost comparable to Richard Feynman.

Another intriguing aspect of the book is that we get a view of the Manhattan Project from a non-scientist's point of view. Mrs. Fermi gives us an inside look at the living conditions and everyday duties / chores of someone who was not actually working on the bomb. This is an interesting viewpoint as I've read several other accounts of Los Alamos as told thru the eyes of the scientists who worked on the bomb.

This is an important book that gives insight into one of the biggest names in modern physics. That he ended up settling in the United States is of great fortitude to we Americans. His discoveries have been a monumental boon to science, and in this book is his life story.

Product Description:
In 1938, at the age of 37, Enrico Fermi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. That same year he emigrated from Italy to the United States and, in the course of his experiments, discovered nuclear fissiona process which forms the basis of nuclear power and atomic bombs. Soon the brilliant physicist was involved in the top secret race to produce the deadliest weapon on Earth. He created the first self-sustaining chain reaction, devised new methods for purifying plutonium, and eventually participated in the first atomic test. This compelling biography traces Fermis education in Italy, his meteoric career in the scientific world, his escape from fascism to America, and the ingenious experiments he devised and conducted at the University of Rome, Columbia University, and the Los Alamos laboratory. The book also presents a mini-course in quantum and nuclear physics in an accessible, fast-paced narrative that invokes all the dizzying passion of Fermis brilliant discoveries.



Customer Review: Fermi made accesible to all:
This is the perfect biography for anyone wanting to learn more about a great man, one of the greatest physicists. Enough of his physics were mentioned or included to make it non-trivial to me (junior astrophysics major, with Fermi distribution functions currently flying out of my ears) and yet I would have no compunctions handing this book to my little cousins in elementary school if they needed to read/write a book report on the life and accomplishments of one of the greatest and most influential scientists of our era. In fact, I would say that is the preferred audience, all physics students have heard of Fermi, but most children (and indeed, most adults) are unaware of his contributions to the way we see the world around us, and to history. All of that is here, in this biography easily accesible to anyone.

Customer Review: The spirit and mind that led to a Nobel Prize and much more:
I'm the author of this book. I sought to show how physics is done and how one of the greatest scientists of our time used his fine mind and friendly yet competitive ways to succeed. I believe I've made Fermi, the man, and the physics he did accessible to a wide range of readers. Don't be put off if you found physics hard in school -- this isn't like that, and it ain't brain surgery.

Fermi was famous for being one of those very rare physicists who are good at both theory and experiment. That helped as he and his team did the neutron experiments that led to his 1938 Nobel Prize. After a dramatic escape from fascist Italy, he and his family emigrated to America. There he went on to create the first nuclear chain reaction (on December 2, 1942) and to play a major role in the development of the atom bomb. After helping to win World War II, he helped set sensible science policy and did more great physics. His name is enshrined in the element Fermium, in the Fermi National Accelerator Lab, and in some of the most impotant concepts of physics.

This book is a good way to learn about a great man and about the way the physical world works. I hope you'll enjoy it; let me know what you think of it.

Product Description:

Product Description:
A quiet, shy boy, Enrico Fermi found escape in books on mathematics and physics. To him, those subjects made sense. The outside world was far more confusing. It was a place where Fermi's older brother died during a simple operation, where his young wife was persecuted for her religion. It was also a world Fermi would radically change.

The experiments he conducted as a refugee in the United States would soon lead to an energy of unimaginable power and potential danger. This is his story.

Product Description:
Describes the life and work of the Nobel prize-winning physicist known for his research in the area of nuclear energy.