As Eugene Wigner wrote: " Ten days before Fermi had died he told me, ' I hope it won't take long.

** Enrico Fermi, Italian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate ( died 1954 )

* September 29-Enrico Fermi ( died 1954 ), Italian physicist.

One model that estimates the properties of an electron gas at absolute zero in metals is the Fermi gas.

The maximum energy that an electrons can have at absolute zero is called the Fermi energy.

For temperatures significantly below the Fermi temperature, the electrons behave in almost the same way as at absolute zero.

In the classical limit, i. e. at large values of or at small density of states — when wave functions of particles practically do not overlap — both the Bose – Einstein or Fermi – Dirac distribution become the Boltzmann distribution.

The BCS theory gives an expression that shows how the gap grows with the strength of the attractive interaction and the ( normal phase ) single particle density of states at the Fermi energy.

Furthermore, it describes how the density of states is changed on entering the superconducting state, where there are no electronic states any more at the Fermi energy.

BCS theory relates the value of the critical field at zero temperature to the value of the transition temperature and the density of states at the Fermi energy.

: Here N ( 0 ) is the electronic density of states at the Fermi energy.

On December 2, 1942, physicist Enrico Fermi conducted the world's first controlled nuclear reaction at the University of Chicago as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project.

In 1918, Fermi enrolled at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa.

During his years at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Fermi teamed up with a fellow student named Franco Rasetti with whom he would indulge in light-hearted pranks and who would later become Fermi's close friend and collaborator.

In July of that year, Fermi submitted his doctoral thesis Un teorema di calcolo delle probabilità ed alcune sue applicazioni ( A theorem on probability and some of its applications ) to the Scuola Normale Superiore and received his Laurea from there at the unusually young age of 21.

In 1924, Fermi spent a semester at the University of Göttingen with Max Born, and then stayed for a few months in Leiden with Paul Ehrenfest.

At age 24, Fermi took a professorship at the University of Rome ( one of the first three in theoretical physics in Italy ) which he won in a competition whose selection committee was chaired by Professor Orso Mario Corbino, director of the Institute of Physics.

In 1938, Fermi received the Nobel Prize in Physics at the age of 37 for his " demonstrations of the existence of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation, and for his related discovery of nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons ".

Soon after his arrival in New York City ( January 2, 1939 ), Fermi began working at Columbia University, where he had already given summer lectures in 1936 While at Columbia from 1939 – 42, until they moved to Chicago, Fermi and his wife resided in Leonia, New Jersey.

Engineer Jack Aeby saw Fermi at work:

The sign at Enrico Fermi Street in Rome

But Fermi also participated in preliminary work on the hydrogen bomb at Los Alamos as a consultant, and along with Stanislaw Ulam, calculated that the amount of tritium needed for Edward Teller's model of a thermonuclear weapon would be prohibitive, and a fusion reaction could not be assured to propagate even with this large quantity of tritium.

Fermi was among the scientists who testified on Oppenheimer's behalf at an AEC hearing in 1954.

Federico Faggin developed the first micro-chip and micro-processor ; Robert Gallo led research that identified a cancer-causing virus, and also the AIDS virus ; Anthony Fauci conducted significant research that led to the discovery of the AIDS virus ; Riccardo Giacconi developed the X-ray telecope ; and Enrico Fermi ushered in the nuclear age.

* Obituary, NY Times, November 29, 1954, Enrico Fermi Dead at 53 ; Architect of Atomic Bomb

Demonstration of a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was accomplished by Enrico Fermi and others, in the successful operation of Chicago Pile-1, the first artificial nuclear reactor, in late 1942.

Enrico Fermi (; 29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954 ) was an Italian physicist, naturalized American later in his life, particularly known for his work on the development of the first nuclear reactor, Chicago Pile-1, and for his contributions to the development of quantum theory, nuclear and particle physics, and statistical mechanics.

The Chicago Pile-1 | Chicago Pile Team, including Fermi ( bottom left ), and Leó Szilárd ( second from right on bottom )

To continue the research where it would not pose a public health hazard, the reactor was disassembled and moved to a wooded site outside Chicago, where Fermi directed research on reactors and other fundamental sciences.

Hayek's first class at Chicago was a faculty seminar on the philosophy of science attended by many of the University's most notable scientists of the time, including Enrico Fermi, Sewall Wright and Leó Szilárd.

In this case, the first experimental atomic reactors would have run away to a dangerous and messy " prompt critical reaction " before their operators could have manually shut them down ( for this reason, designer Enrico Fermi included radiation-counter-triggered control rods, suspended by electromagnets, which could automatically drop into the center of Chicago Pile-1 ).

Enrico Fermi created the first artificial self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, called Chicago Pile-1 ( CP-1 ), in a racquets court below the bleachers of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago on December 2, 1942.

File: Enrico Fermi 1943-49. jpg | Enrico Fermi ( 1901-1954 ): developed first nuclear reactor ( Chicago Pile-1 ), contributed to quantum theory, nuclear and particle physics, and statistical mechanics, awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on induced radioactivity.

Richard Carrigan, a particle physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago, Illinois, suggested that passive SETI could also be dangerous in the style of computer viruses.

* December 2 – Manhattan Project: Below the bleachers of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago, a team led by Enrico Fermi initiates the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction ( a coded message, " The Italian navigator has landed in the new world " is then sent to U. S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ).

This built on work done by Fermi and his colleagues at the University of Chicago in 1942 which created the world's first experimental nuclear reactor Chicago Pile-1 and the first sustained nuclear reaction on December 2, 1942.

Soon, Pasta and Ulam became experienced with electronic computation on MANIAC, and by this time, Enrico Fermi had settled into a routine of spending academic years at the University of Chicago and summers at Los Alamos.

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory ( Fermilab ), located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a US Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics.

As of January 1, 2007, Fermilab is operated by the Fermi Research Alliance, a joint venture of the University of Chicago, Illinois Institute of Technology and the Universities Research Association ( URA ).

The first experimental nuclear reactor had been developed and constructed by Enrico Fermi and his team of co-workers by the end of 1942 at the University of Chicago ( Chicago Pile-1 ), which proved that there were no obvious physical limitations to producing a slow-neutron nuclear chain reaction.

* Enrico Fermi Institute, Chicago, Illinois