His discoveries changed our world they led to weapons of mass destruction and conversely to life-saving medical interventions. Called the Pope by his peers, he was regarded as infallible in his instincts and research.

Hoerlin and Segrè’s exhaustive research took them to Rome, Pisa, the University of Chicago and Los Alamos, as well as to Trinity, the New Mexico site of the first nuclear explosion.The Pope of Physics: Enrico Fermi and the Birth of the Atomic AgeĮnrico Fermi is unquestionably among the greats of the world’s physicists, the most famous Italian scientist since Galileo. Like her husband and co-author, Gino Segrè, Hoerlin’s parents fled anti-Semitism in Europe at the same time that Fermi did. Though not a physicist herself, Hoerlin was the daughter of one, and grew up in the Atomic City of Los Alamos.

She is the author of Steps of Courage: My Parents’ Journey from Nazi Germany to America. She has been a visiting lecturer at Haverford College and Oxford University. In addition, Segrè’s uncle, Emilio, was Fermi’s first student in Italy, later a long-time collaborator, and won a Nobel Prize of his own.īettina Hoerlin served as health commissioner of Philadelphia and taught at the University of Pennsylvania. Fermi inspired Segrè to become a physicist, so the desire to commemorate him in a biography was deeply felt. He is the author of three books of scientific history: Ordinary Geniuses, Faust in Copenhagen, and A Matter of Degrees. He has been a visiting professor at MIT and Oxford University, chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania, and director of the theoretical physics at the National Science Foundation.

Gino Segrè is a professor emeritus of physics and astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania. Fermi’s prolific career, spanning both theoretical and experimental physics, is unparalleled and changed the shape of modern physics. Based on their recently published book, THE POPE OF PHYSICS: Enrico Fermi and the Birth of the Atomic Age (Henry Holt, October 2016), co-authors Segrè and Hoerlin will discuss Fermi’s modest beginnings in Rome amidst the tumultuous environment of fascist Italy, his immigration to America escaping anti-Semitism and how he became a key figure in the Manhattan Project. This colloquium will focus on a towering figure in the history of physics, unquestionably the most famous scientist to come from Italy since Galileo.

The Pope of Physics by Gino Segrè