Atoms in the Family

In this absorbing account of life with the great atomic scientist Enrico Fermi, Laura Fermi tells the story of their emigration to the United States in the 1930s—part of the widespread movement of scientists from Europe to the New World that was so important to the development of the first atomic bomb. Combining intellectual biography and social history, Laura Fermi traces her husband’s career from his childhood, when he taught himself physics, through his rise in the Italian university system concurrent with the rise of fascism, to his receipt of the Nobel Prize, which offered a perfect opportunity to flee the country without arousing official suspicion, and his odyssey to the United States.

Table of Contents

Part I: Italy

1. First Encounters

2. The Times Before We Met

3. The Times Before We Met — Continued

4. Birth of a School

5. Bébé Peugeot

6. Early Married Years

7. Mr. North and the Academies

8. A Summer in Ann Arbor

9. Work

10. South American Interlude

11. An Accidental Discovery

12. How Not to Raise Children

13. November 10, 1938

14. Departure

Part II: America

15. The Process of Americanization

16. Some Shapes of Things to Come

17. An Enemy Alien Works for Uncle Sam

18. Of Secrecy and the Pile

19. Success

20. Site Y

21. A Bodyguard and a Few Friends

Review

“If Laura Fermi is short on domestic candor, she makes up for it in excellent science-chronicling. Her accounts of Fermi’s critical experiments in Italy will delight the lay reader without horrifying the pure scientist.” — Ralph E. Lapp ― New York Times

“Fermi’s biography by his wife is a polished, lively piece on the man who won the Nobel Prize for work in nuclear physics and who helped to make the atom bomb. Covering their life together through three decades and two continents, there are intimate pictures of the early teaching days in Rome in an increasingly fascistic Italy, of other scientists who were their friends, and of the years at Columbia, Chicago, and Los Alamos. Valuable.” ― Kirkus

“Damn original, these Fermis.” ― New York Times

From the Back Cover

My life with Enrico Fermi.In this absorbing account of life with the great atomic scientist Enrico Fermi, Laura Fermi tells the story of their emigration to the United States in the 1930’s-part of the widespread movement of scientists from Europe to the New World that was so important to the development of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos. Combining intellectual biography and social history, Laura Fermi traces her husband’s career from his childhood, when he taught himself physics, through his rise in the Italian university system concurrent with the rise of fascism, to his receipt of the Nobel Prize in 1938, and his odyssey to Columbia University, Los Alamos, and the University of Chicago.

About the Author

Laura Fermi (1907-77) also wrote Atoms for the World, Mussolini, and Illustrious Immigrants: The Intellectual Migration from Europe, 1930-1941.