Word: fermi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...stars; the required heat seemed unattainable. In 1938 Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner discovered nuclear fission, and their discovery led directly to the Abomb. And fission, with its intense release of energy, also suggested that conditions could be created under which thermonuclear reactions might occur. The late Enrico Fermi in 1942 suggested to Teller that fission could be used to start thermonuclear reaction in deuterium (heavy hydrogen). "After a few weeks of hard thought," Teller recalls, "I decided that deuterium could not be ignited by atomic bombs...
...these accomplishments, Kimpton realizes that the University of Chicago has lost much of the experimental glamour of the Hutchins era. Nor has he been able to replace such men as Physicist Enrico Fermi, who died last November, Psychologist Louis Thurstone and Sociologist Ernest Burgess, who retired, or Chemist Harrison Brown, Geologist F. J. Pettijohn and Physiologist Ralph Gerard, all of whom have gone elsewhere. Will Chicago ever again become as exciting a place as it used to be? The danger is, says Kimpton, "that you get so used to thinking in terms of retrenchment that you lose any imaginative flair...
Like most physicists, Fermi regretted that atomic energy, so far, has been used largely for military purposes. He died just as the world was on the verge of seeing the faint beginnings of the peacetime good that it can bring...
Faint Beginnings. Fermi fled from Mussolini's tyranny and reached the U.S. n time to become a key man in the atom-bomb project. Many honors came to Fermi, but they did not make him less be-oved by his colleagues and students. His ife after the squash-court event was omething of an anticlimax (it could not lave been otherwise), but it was happy and productive. He had a zest for life (skiing, swimming, mountain climbing) as ell as for knowledge...
Died. Enrico Fermi, 53, world-famed Italian-born nuclear physicist who supervised the building of the first successful nuclear reactor; of cancer; in Chicago (see SCIENCE...