Enrico Fermi (1901-1954), Charles H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago and 1938 Nobel Prize winner in physics, is best known to the general public for having produced the first controlled, self-sustained nuclear chain reaction.

Fermi’s first laboratory notebook, which we have identified at the Fondazione Oscar D’Agostino in Avellino, it is possible to follow in real time the whole process that led to the discovery of neutron-induced radioactivity.

The finding in question is a notebook, clearly written in Fermi's handwriting, which records the frenzied days and nights that Fermi spent experimenting alone, driven by his theoretical ideas on beta decay. The notebook was found by the authors while browsing through documents left by Oscar D'Agostino, the chemist among Fermi's group.

2023年6月29日 · Summary: Notebook E3, untitled, 1950-1954, University of Chicago, 10 x 17 cm, a loose-leaf notebook that contains alphabetized entries on various topics and data relating to the Chicago cyclotron and to the development of early high-speed counting devices. Entries include topics such as energy of activation, pions, and V-particles.

This notebook was found some years ago in Avellino, the birthplace of Oscar D’Agostino, by the two historians Guerra and Robotti and then published by Spilger with the title ‘Lost book of E. Fermi’. The notebook contains the two most important pages (19 and 24) about Aluminium and Calcium radioactivity.

2017年12月6日 · Visit the Enrico Fermi and the Nuclear Chain Reaction library guide for more information, including links to digitized materials. Read more about Enrico Fermi and the first nuclear chain reaction: Enrico Fermi, Physicist (1970) by Emilio Segrè.

2018年1月1日 · The finding in question is a notebook, clearly written in Fermi's handwriting, which records the frenzied days and nights that Fermi spent experimenting alone, driven by his theoretical ideas...

2023年6月29日 · Enrico Fermi (1901-1954), Charles H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago, and 1938 Nobel Prize winner in physics, is best known to the general public for his leadership of the Manhattan Project team, which succeeded in obtaining the first controlled self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.

2004年7月1日 · Enrico Fermi and the Nuclear Chain Reaction Featuring information about the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction (chain reaction) and the role of Enrico Fermi. Includes links to resources in the University of Chicago Library collections and to a variety of web resources.