Book review: The Fermi Age
A review of Fermi Remembered, James W. Cronin, editor; The University
of Chicago Press; August 2004; 296 pp.
Fermi age, Fermi constant, Fermi-Dirac gas, Fermi energy, Fermi hole, fermion,
Fermi selection rules, Fermi statistics, fermium…
“No serious student can enter physics without finding the name Fermi everywhere.” These
are the words of James W. Cronin — editor of Fermi Remembered, a collection
of essays recently published by the University of Chicago Press.
Enrico Fermi was born in Rome, 1901. To commemorate the centennial of his
birth in 2001, the University of Chicago sponsored a symposium emphasizing
1945-54, the postwar years when he was a physics professor there. Speakers
included Fermi's faculty colleagues, students, and friends. Such a stellar
group who knew Fermi will likely never be assembled again. Fermi Remembered is
the permanent record of that historic occasion, along with some new material
added by Cronin.
Cronin himself was a graduate student in physics during the Fermi years at
Chicago and is now professor emeritus and a Nobel Prize laureate. Reflecting
on the preparation of this volume, Cronin said, “We all knew Fermi and his
civility towards all he interacted with. I put the material together to get
a more complete picture of the man. What may stand out is his deep concern
that civilization would be able to handle the menace of nuclear weapons without
disaster.”
Contributors of personal reminiscences to Fermi Remembered include
seven Nobel laureates in physics, as well as a former Argonne Associate Division
Director -- Roger Hildebrand. Along with essays on Fermi's life and scientific
legacy are historic photographs of Fermi with famous colleagues. Also reproduced
are some manually typed letters and handwritten notes that give a heightened
sense of Fermi's life and times.
Regarding Fermi's work day, the reader learns that it routinely began at 7:30
am and ended no later than 6:00 pm. Within those hours Fermi inspired many
physics students by his clear explanations of complex problems, wrote a steady
stream of important scientific papers, helped establish the University of Chicago
as the place for the study of high-energy physics, and -- as infrequently as
possible -- served on committees. After hours he liked to swim, ski and throw
parties in which his one strict rule was “No shop talk.”
According to Cronin, Fermi has a special connection to Argonne because his “development
of the self-sustained fission reaction is what created Argonne. And after
the war he and colleagues made great use of the neutron beams from the lab's
reactors while waiting for the Chicago cyclotron.”
Fermi died from stomach cancer in 1954. He faced death with the same courage
and dignity he displayed during the course of his too-short life. In a biographical
essay that opens Fermi Remembered, Emilio Segrè summed
up his scientific life in the following words: “He gave to science all he had
and with him disappeared the last universal physicist in the tradition of the
great men of the 19th century, when it was still possible for a single person
to reach the highest summits, both in theory and experiment, and to dominate
all fields of physics.” Anyone curious about why Segrè's compliment
rings true will want to read this excellent collection. — Joseph
E. Harmon
|