Review by Choice Review
All physicists, and many others, know of Enrico Fermi--an extraordinary genius who was among a handful of individuals to revolutionize particle physics in the twentieth century. He is known as a Nobel laureate who worked on the Manhattan Project, but less widely known are the details of his life: his fascination for gambling, which first drew him to probability and statistics (a field he also revolutionized with the development of Fermi-Dirac statistics); his collaboration with Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar on cosmic rays; his secret hope that he wouldn't have to share a Nobel Prize with another physicist as Schrödinger and Dirac did; his detached attitude to death from an early age. These are some of the varied facets of Fermi's life as explored in Schwartz's biography. Schwartz, an author whose father was himself a Nobel-winning particle physicist, offers an engaging, carefully researched account of Fermi's life and career. Of particular interest to physicists is the chapter on Fermi's discoveries regarding beta-rays. The story of the inauguration of the first nuclear reactor is enriched with personal details. Overall, this volume provides a fascinating look at one of the greatest scientists of the twentieth century. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. --Varadaraja V. Raman, emeritus, Rochester Institute of Technology
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
ALBERT EINSTEIN ONCE remarked that he had sold himself body and soul to science, "being in flight from the I and the we to the it." Einstein's transformation followed from and repudiated an early-adolescent phase of intense religiosity. Enrico Fermi, the Italian-American physicist whose long list of achievements includes co-inventing the nuclear reactor, escaped into science as well, but in his case the impetus was traumatic: the sudden death of his beloved older brother, Giulio, during throat surgery when Fermi was 13. That loss precipitated an intense lifelong privacy and a personal and scientific strategy of quantifying the world. Fermi wielded a six-inch slide rule as we today wield our iPhones, to plumb the essence of events. He ranks high in the second tier of 20th-century physicists, behind figures like Einstein and the Danish theoretician Niels Bohr. There have been other accounts of his life, yet David N. Schwartz's new portrait, "The Last Man Who Knew Everything," is the first thorough biography to be published since Fermi's death 64 years ago in 1954. Schwartz, the author of "NATO's Nuclear Dilemmas," cautions that the record of Fermi's life is thin: no personal journals, few letters, little more than the testimony of colleagues, family and friends. The biographer was forced to devote most of his effort to Fermi's work life. With a subject like Fermi, that restriction is a limit but hardly a loss. When Fermi died of stomach cancer at 53, Hans Bethe, the theorist who taught us how the sun shines, wrote his colleague's widow, Laura, "There is no one like Enrico, and there will not be another for a hundred years." Schwartz calls Fermi "the greatest Italian scientist since Galileo." Add to these tributes that Fermi was a natural leader - charming, gregarious, bursting with energy, easy in command - and one is left wondering why a full biography has been so long delayed. The American part of Fermi's life began in 1938. When the Swedish Academy decided to award him that year's Nobel Prize in Physics for his work with radioactive elements and nuclear reactions, it took the unusual step of having Bohr ask Fermi privately if he could accept it. Adolf Hitler had banned the Nobels in Germany after a German peace activist was awarded the 1936 Peace Prize. In 1938, the academy feared Italy's Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, might follow suit. Fermi knew Mussolini was hungry for national honors and told Bohr so. The advance notice gave the Fermis time to prepare their escape, urgent because Laura was Jewish and Mussolini was promulgating increasingly harsh antiSemitic laws. The Nobel, worth more than $500,000 today, set up the family in its new country, where a professorship at Columbia University awaited the new laureate. Fatefully, the Fermis sailed from Italy the same week that two Berlin radiochemists discovered nuclear fission. That discovery was totally unexpected. In spring 1939, working at Columbia with the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, Fermi set out to answer a crucial question about it. Uranium atoms release a burst of energy when they fission, enough per atom to make a grain of sand visibly jump. But what then? Was there a way to combine those individual fissions, to turn a small burst into a mighty roar? Szilard, ever-resourceful, acquired hundreds of pounds of black, greasy uraniumoxide powder from a Canadian mining corporation. Fermi and his students packed the powder into pipe-like tin cans and arranged them equally spaced in a circle within a large tank of water mixed with powdered manganese. At the center of the arrangement they placed a neutron source. Neutrons from the source, slowed down by the water, would penetrate the uranium atoms in the cans and induce fissions. If the fissioning atoms released more neutrons, those "secondary" neutrons would irradiate the manganese. Measuring the radioactivity induced in the manganese would tell Fermi if the fissions were multiplying. If so, then a chain reaction might be possible, one bombarding neutron splitting a uranium atom and releasing two neutrons, those two splitting two other uranium atoms and releasing four, the four releasing eight, and so on in a geometric progression that could potentially produce vast amounts of energy for power - or for an atomic bomb. The experiment worked. In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized a program to build atomic bombs, hoping to defeat a Germany that was potentially a year or more ahead in the deadly race. Fermi, working now at the University of Chicago, undertook the building of a full-scale reactor to demonstrate that a chain reaction could be achieved and controlled. By then it was known as well that a nuclear reactor would breed a newly discovered element, plutonium, an alternative nuclear explosive. Fermi's reactor would also demonstrate the breeding of plutonium. Instead of water, which absorbed too many neutrons, the demonstration reactor would use graphite, the form of carbon found in pencil lead, to slow the neutrons. Graphite blocks the size of planter boxes, drilled with blind holes to house slugs of uranium metal, would be stacked layer by layer to form a spherical matrix. Fermi, who loved American idioms, called his creation a "pile." Across the month of November 1942, Fermi supervised the building of Chicago Pile No. 1 on a doubles squash court under the west stands of the university football stadium, ft was ready on the frigid morning of Dec. 2, 1942. Through the morning and early afternoon, wielding his slide rule, Fermi slowly took the pile critical, with a characteristically Fermian break for lunch, ft worked, which meant a bomb would almost certainly work as well. Historically, no other development in Fermi's life ranks as high as the nuclear reactor, mighty versions of which produce more than 11 percent of the world's electricity today. Fermi continued to contribute original scientific work throughout the war and postwar at the University of Chicago. He advised the United States government on atomic energy and worked on weapons problems during summer stints at Los Alamos. He opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb more vehemently than J. Robert Oppenheimer but escaped the ruination visited upon Oppenheimer by the vindictive chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Lewis L. Strauss. He went on to help build the first hydrogen bomb. 1 kept wishing this biography were livelier, lit with more surprises, but Schwartz, working with limited sources, tells the story well. A few infelicities are distracting. "Disinterested" doesn't mean "uninterested." "Fulsome" still means "offensively flattering," not "generous," though the meaning is changing. Brig. Gen. Leslie R. Groves of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, not Oppenheimer, held "authority over the entire Manhattan Project." Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, one part of the project, where the first bombs were designed and built. Still, these are minor mistakes. All in all, Schwartz's biography adds importantly to the literature of the utterly remarkable men and women who opened up nuclear physics to the world. No other development in Fermi's life ranks as high as the development of the atomic reactor. RICHARD RHODES'S next book, "Energy: A Human History," will be published in May.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [April 29, 2018]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* In 1942, after Enrico Fermi had forever changed the world by triggering the first-ever atomic chain reaction, a colleague asked his wife, Laura Fermi, Do you think anything is impossible for Enrico? In this compelling new biography, Schwartz makes clear how little lay beyond the reach of this scientific polymath. A laudably lucid narrative illuminates how Fermi's remarkable breadth of intellect established him as Italy's most celebrated twentieth-century scientist, a pioneer in theorizing on beta rays and in creating new elements through slow-neutron bombardment. Acclaimed as a Nobel laureate, Fermi uniquely excelled as theorist, experimentalist, and teacher. And that unparalleled range of talents quickly elevated Fermi to leadership in American science, after he fled a Nazifying Europe. Schwartz expertly captures all the high drama of Fermi's December 1942 breakthrough in fission and all the tense intrigue of the consequent Manhattan Project bomb-making in which Fermi's multifaceted genius again shone. Though comparable to Segrè and Hoerlin's The Pope of Physics (2016) as an account of Fermi's groundbreaking science, Schwartz's biography delivers a much fuller personal portrait, illuminating how this generous friend to scientific colleagues, this inspiring mentor to students, often proved a difficult husband and negligent father. A sophisticated portrayal of a complex man.--Christensen, Bryce Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Schwartz (NATO's Nuclear Dilemmas), a State Department alumnus, introduces a new generation to Enrico Fermi (1901-1954) with the first English-language biography of Fermi in 47 years. An Italian immigrant, Nobel laureate, and passionate outdoorsman, Fermi pioneered the physics breakthroughs that shaped the 20th century. Readers will find no equations here, only unfaltering, clear explanations of the science behind his discoveries relating to the weak and strong interactions, Fermi-Dirac statistics, computational physics, and nuclear reactors. Along with Fermi's life in Italy and America, Schwartz ably resurrects his Los Alamos years, showing how "much of what was secret in the Manhattan Project originated in Fermi's brain." Uniquely, Fermi triply excelled in experimentation, theory, and teaching. By "stripping problems to their bare essentials and leading his students through step-by-step solutions," Fermi "believed that anyone could learn what he knew." Charismatic, confident, and approachable, he was beloved by students and peers alike. But Fermi showed reticence "in every aspect of his personal life," writing "neither letters nor diaries." Schwartz recreates Fermi's story from the outside in, aided by the writings of his wife, Laura, and his colleagues. Told in a sure, steady voice, Schwartz's book delivers a scrupulously researched and lovingly crafted portrait of the "greatest Italian scientist since Galileo." (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
One of Enrico Fermi's (1901-54) former students referred to him as "the last man who knew everything" because he was a physicist who was brilliant not only in the theoretical realm but also in the experimental branch. Schwartz (NATO's Nuclear Dilemmas) relates the life story of Fermi, including his younger years in Italy, the death of his brother, his immense capacity for learning mathematics and physics, his Nobel Prize work, his escape to America and work on the atomic bomb, and his legacy at the University of Chicago. Unfortunately, Schwartz has the tendency to use such phrases as "we now know" or "one is" to refer to the reader. His research is sound, and the book includes notes and a bibliography. Verdict In 2016, another Fermi biography was published-Bettina Hoerlin and Gino Segrè's The Pope of Physics, that is superior to this book in both writing style and organization of content.-Jason L. Steagall, Gateway Technical Coll. Lib., Elkhorn, WI © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A fine life of the scientist "who knew everything about physics, the study of matter, energy, time, and their relationship."Never a media darling like Einstein or Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi (1901-1954) is now barely known to the public, but few scientists would deny that he was among the most brilliant physicists of his century. A lucid writer who has done his homework, Schwartz (NATO's Nuclear Dilemma, 1983), whose father won a Nobel Prize in physics, delivers a thoroughly enjoyable, impressively researched account. The son of a middle-class Italian family, Fermi was a prodigy. As an adolescent, he absorbed textbooks in physics and mathematics and obtained perfect grades in those subjects in college. After graduation, he led a team that made Italy, formerly a backwater, a world-class center of physics. In the decade after 1925, Fermi described the weak interaction, one of the four fundamental forces of nature, and perfected neutron bombardment of the atomic nucleus, which produced artificial radioactivity and ultimately nuclear fission and the atomic bomb. After winning the Nobel Prize in physics in 1938, he left Mussolini's Italy for the United States, where his research indicated that neutrons from uranium fission would lead to a chain reaction releasing enormous energy. Proving this required an actual chain reaction, which he accomplished in 1942 after building the first atomic reactor. He led a section of the Manhattan project, which produced the atomic bomb, and remained a dominant figure until his premature death at 53. Einstein only theorized; Ernest Lawrence only built machines and experimented; Fermi excelled at both besides being a superb teacher universally loved by students. Neither eccentric nor introspective, he kept no diary, so little is known of his inner life, but Schwartz has no qualms about speculating. A rewarding, expert biography of a giant of the golden age of physics. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
