Volume 41, Number 6 · March 24, 1994
Eye on the Prize
By Jeremy Bernstein
A Mind Always in Motion: The Autobiography of Emilio Segrè
by Emilio Segrè
University of California Press, 332 pp., $30.00
In 1926 Enrico Fermi was appointed a full professor of physics in Rome. He was only twenty-five years old, but he had already made several significant contributions to physics, the most important of which had to do with the statistical mechanics of particles like electrons. This was the first of several discoveries for which Fermi deserved a Nobel prize (although he did not receive one until 1938). He was, at the time, probably the only scientist in Italy who really understood modern physics. Until 1928 there was not even a text in Italian suitable for introducing graduate students to the subject. Fermi was determined to change all of that, and he began recruiting students who were not much younger than he was.
Review, 5002 words
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