Enrico Fermi 1901–1954

JAN 01, 1955

The untimely death of Enrico Fermi on November 28th deprived the world of one of its most brilliant and productive physicists. The following remarks by three of Fermi’s friends and colleagues were made on the occasion of a memorial service held on December 3rd in the University of Chicago’s Rockefeller Memorial Chapel. Samuel K. Allison, professor of physics and director of the University’s Institute for Nuclear Studies, presided at the ceremony.

DOI: 10.1063/1.3061909

S. K. Allison

Emilio Segrè

Herbert L. Anderson

We are here to honor the memory of Enrico Fermi, Charles H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor of Physics at this University during the last decade. I shall try to express the sentiments of his associates here in the Institute for Nuclear Studies. Actually, the Institute is his Institute, for he was its outstanding source of intellectual stimulation. It was Enrico who attended every seminar and with incredible brilliance critically assayed every new idea or discovery. It was Enrico who arrived first in the morning and left last at night, filling each day with his outpouring of mental and physical energy. It was Enrico’s presence and calm judgment, and the enormous respect we had for him, which made it impossible to magnify, or even mention, any small differences among us, such as can arise in any closely associated group. It was at Enrico’s personal and urgent request that I took on the chore of directing the Institute in its routine affairs.

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More about the authors

S. K. Allison, Institute for Nuclear Studies, University of Chicago.

Emilio Segrè, University of California, Berkeley.

Herbert L. Anderson, Institute for Nuclear Studies, University of Chicago.