Enrico Fermi

Fermi, Enrico (1901–54), Italian atomic physicist who won the 1938 Nobel Prize for physics for his experiments with radioactivity. He showed that neutron bombardment of most elements produced their radioisotopes. Fermi emigrated to the United States to escape the fascists, becoming professor at Columbia University (1939) and at University of Chicago (1942), where he built the world's first nuclear reactor (1942).

See also: Atom.