The Pope of physics
by Gino Segrè · first published 2016
2mentions
1recommended by
2HN commenters
2017–2021first – last mentioned
50% recommend50% neutral
"The first full-scale biography of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist and one of the fathers of the atomic age, Enrico Fermi. Enrico Fermi is unquestionably the most famous scientist to come from Italy since Galileo, so revered that he's known as The Pope of Physics. A modest, unassuming man, Fermi was nevertheless one of the most productive and creative scientists of the twentieth century, one of the fathers of the Atomic Bomb and a Nobel Prize winner whose contributions to physics and nuclear technology live on today, with the largest particle accelerator in the United States and the nation's
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
This anecdote is described in greater detail in "The Pope of Physics", by Gino Segrè & Bettina Hoerlin (Enrico Fermi's biography told by a nephew of a close collaborator of the famous physicist). This fascinating episode is told in the first chapter, if I rember correctly.…
on “Estimating a nuclear blast with bits of paper” ↗…remember my old friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, with four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.” There was little to add.” ''' [1] Segre G., Hoerlin B. The Pope of Physics: Enrico Fermi and the Birth of the Atomic Age. Henry Holt and Co, 2016 ISBN 9781627790055 This quote is from Oliver Consa's 2020 paper: "Something is rotten in the state of QED".
on “When Feynman met Dirac (2020)” ↗