How much was Enrico Fermi worth?
| Net Worth: | $500 Thousand |
|---|---|
| Profession: | Physicist |
| Date of Birth: | September 29, 1901 |
| Country: | Italy |
| Height: | 1.6 m |
About Enrico Fermi
Enrico Fermi, an Italian physicist who later became a citizen of the United States, was born on September 29, 1901, and his estimated net worth is $500,000. The Chicago Pile-1, the first nuclear reactor in history, was built by Fermi. Up to 8 young scientists who later won Nobel Prizes are known to have received tutoring from Fermi or to have been personally affected by him.
- Birthdate: September 29, 1901
- Birthplace: Rome, Italy
- Died: November 28, 1954, in Chicago, Illinois
Enrico Fermi received the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for “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.“
Initial Research Achievements
Enrico Fermi was only 21 years old when he obtained his PhD from his university in Pisa. In 1923, he was the first to notice that the equation E = mc2, which Albert Einstein had introduced nearly twenty years earlier, implied that there was an enormous amount of potential energy contained within the atomic nucleus. This realization laid the groundwork for harnessing nuclear energy through the processes of nuclear fusion. Italian physics at the time focused on experimental physics over theoretical physics, so his thesis work focused on x-ray diffraction techniques.
Fermi conducted a statistical analysis of similar particles that adhered to Wolfgang Pauli’s exclusion principle after it was published in 1925. After he worked on this problem, these kinds of particles were given the term fermions.
The scientific understanding of fundamental particles was afterwards developed by Fermi, who also predicted the creation of the neutrino as a result of the weak interaction, which he also put out.
Additionally, he experimented with radioactivity, bombarding thorium and uranium with slow neutrons to create new elements.
Later Achievements
Due to Italian anti-Jewish laws and the fact that Dr. Fermi’s wife, Laura, was Jewish, he decided to immigrate to the United States in 1938. He later participated in the Manhattan Project and contributed to the creation of the first atomic bomb. But first, he concentrated on areas of nuclear reaction research that were less directly militaristic. He managed the construction of the first self-sustaining nuclear reactor, Chicago Pile-1, in 1942. On December 2, the reactor reached criticality, making nuclear fusion self-sustaining. Following that, Robert Oppenheimer relocated Fermi so that he could join the group in Los Alamos.
Beginning in 1945, Fermi began teaching at the University of Chicago after the Second World War. He undertook research there that advanced our knowledge of cosmic rays by proposing that they were accelerated through magnetic fields as they traveled around the galaxy.
In his later years, he also started to worry about humanity’s capacity to utilize the emerging nuclear technology responsibly. These worries are well-expressed in the following quotation, which is taken from the notes for a 1952 address on “The Future of Nuclear Physics” (and described on page 142 of the 2004 book Fermi Remembered):
Some of you may wonder what the point is of laboring so hard to gather a small number of data that, at most, will only be understood by a select group of specialists and will not be of any service to anyone other than a few long-haired individuals who enjoy collecting such things. I can make a fairly secure forecast in response to such a query. Science and technology history has repeatedly shown us that improvements in fundamental knowledge eventually result in technical and industrial applications that transform our way of life. What is less certain, and what we desperately hope, is that man will soon become mature enough to effectively wield the abilities that he has over nature. It seems unlikely to me that this attempt to understand the structure of matter will be an exception to the rule.
Based on his ideas about extraterrestrial life, there was another field that got associated with his name. He argued that if intelligent life existed in the universe, it was extremely odd and astonishing that we had not yet come across it. Formally, this concept became known as Fermi’s paradox.
Death
In 1954, Fermi passed away at his Chicago home from stomach cancer. Enrico Fermi’s wealth was $500 000 at the time of his passing in 1954.
In honor of his significant contribution as one of the inventors of modern particle physics, the University of Chicago’s particle accelerator in Batavia, Illinois, was given the name Fermilab in 1974. In recognition of his work on cosmic rays, the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope was named in 2008. He is the recipient of many honors, including the Fermi Award, the highest honor presented by the US Atomic Energy Commission.
