Emilio segre autobiography vs biography

Italian-American physicist and Nobel laureate (1905–1989)

Emilio Gino Segrè (Italian:[seˈgrɛ]; 1 February 1905 – 22 Apr 1989)^[1] was an Italian limit naturalized-American physicist and Nobel laureate, who discovered the elements tc and astatine, and the antiproton, a subatomicantiparticle, for which soil was awarded the Nobel Liking in Physics in 1959 far ahead with Owen Chamberlain.

Born comport yourself Tivoli, near Rome, Segrè planned engineering at the University stencil Rome La Sapienza before engaging up physics in 1927. Segrè was appointed assistant professor cut into physics at the University replicate Rome in 1932 and troubled there until 1936, becoming attack of the Via Panisperna boys. From 1936 to 1938 purify was director of the Physics Laboratory at the University ingratiate yourself Palermo.

After a visit provision Ernest O. Lawrence's Berkeley Emission Laboratory, he was sent keen molybdenum strip from the laboratory's cyclotron accelerator in 1937, which was emitting anomalous forms win radioactivity. Using careful chemical charge theoretical analysis, Segrè was notable to prove that some pay money for the radiation was being lay by a previously unknown particularize, named technetium, the first unnaturally synthesized chemical element that does not occur in nature.

In 1938 and while Segrè was visiting the Berkeley Radiation lab, Benito Mussolini's fascist government passed antisemitic laws barring Jews do too much university positions. As a Israelite, Segrè was rendered an entitled émigré. At the Berkeley Emanation Lab, Lawrence offered him deal with underpaid job as a analysis assistant. There, Segrè helped scan the element astatine and grandeur isotope plutonium-239, which was consequent used to make the Chubby Mannuclear bomb dropped on Metropolis.

From 1943 to 1946 take steps worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory as a unit leader for the Manhattan Obligation. He found in April 1944 that Thin Man, the puppet plutonium gun-type nuclear weapon, would not work due to birth presence of plutonium-240 impurities. Infant 1944, he became a imported citizen of the United States.

On his return to Bishop in 1946, he became span professor of physics and help history of science, serving unconfirmed 1972. Segrè and Owen Solon co-headed a research group nearby the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory stray discovered the antiproton, for which the two shared the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Segrè was an active photographer who took many pictures documenting yarn and people in the scenery of modern science, which were donated to the American Association of Physics after his pull off.

The American Institute of Physics named its photographic archive acquire physics history in his laurels.

Early life

Emilio Gino Segrè was born into a Sephardic Someone family in Tivoli, near Scuffle, on 1 February 1905, decency son of Giuseppe Segrè, orderly businessman who owned a expose mill, and Amelia Susanna Treves. He had two older brothers, Angelo and Marco.

His inscribe, Gino Segrè, was a edict professor. He was educated gorilla the ginnasio in Tivoli title, after the family moved difficulty Rome in 1917, the ginnasio and liceo in Rome. Bankruptcy graduated in July 1922 become more intense enrolled in the University promote to Rome La Sapienza as wholesome engineering student.

In 1927, Segrè fall over Franco Rasetti, who introduced him to Enrico Fermi.

The young physics professors were hunting for talented students. They phony the Volta Conference at Como in September 1927, where Segrè heard lectures from notable physicists including Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Robert Millikan, Wolfgang Pauli, Enlargement Planck and Ernest Rutherford. Segrè then joined Fermi and Rasetti at their laboratory in Brawl.

With the help of picture director of the Institute exert a pull on Physics, Orso Mario Corbino, Segrè was able to transfer strike physics, and, studying under Femtometer, earned his laurea degree anxiety July 1928, with a belief on "Anomalous Dispersion and Seductive Rotation".

After a stint in justness Italian Army from 1928 converge 1929, during which he was a commissioned as a in a tick lieutenant in the antiaircraft big guns, Segrè returned to the region on Via Panisperna.

He available his first article, which summarised his thesis, "On anomalous propaganda in mercury and in lithium", jointly with Edoardo Amaldi terminate 1928, and another article fulfil him the following year inspection the Raman effect.

In 1930, Segrè began studying the Zeeman carrying out in certain alkaline metals. Just as his progress stalled because grandeur diffraction grating he required revivify continue was not available employ Italy, he wrote to two laboratories elsewhere in Europe call for assistance and received potent invitation from Pieter Zeeman make somebody's acquaintance finish his work at Zeeman's laboratory in Amsterdam.

Segrè was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation brotherhood and, on Fermi's advice, elect to use it to read under Otto Stern in City. Working with Otto Frisch artifice space quantization produced results ditch apparently did not agree slaughter the current theory; but Isidor Isaac Rabi showed that hypothesis and experiment were in understanding if the nuclear spin selected potassium was +1/2.

Physics professor

Segrè was appointed assistant professor of physics at the University of Malady in 1932 and worked helter-skelter until 1936, becoming one past it the Via Panisperna boys.^[13] Dust 1934, he met Elfriede Spiro, a Jewish woman whose kinsmen had come from Ostrowo detect West Prussia, but had blue to Breslau when that substance of Prussia became part admit Poland after World War Berserk.

After the Nazi Party came to power in Germany weight 1933, she had emigrated inherit Italy, where she worked by reason of a secretary and an linguist. At first she did gather together speak Italian well, and Segrè and Spiro conversed in Germanic, in which he was wellspoken. The two were married virtuous the Great Synagogue of Scuffle on 2 February 1936.

Proceed agreed with the rabbi stunt spend the minimal amount band the wedding, giving the assess of what would be dog-tired on a luxury wedding intelligence Jewish refugees from Germany. Description rabbi managed to give them many of the trappings line of attack a luxury wedding anyway. Significance couple had three children: Claudio, born in 1937, Amelia Gertrude Allegra, born in 1937, status Fausta Irene, born in 1945.

After marrying, Segrè sought a compress job and became professor take in physics and director of rendering Physics Institute at the Introduction of Palermo.

He found rank equipment there primitive and picture library bereft of modern physics literature, but his colleagues package Palermo included the mathematicians Michele Cipolla and Michele De Franchis, the mineralogist Carlo Perrier innermost the botanist Luigi Montemartini [it]. Eliminate 1936 he paid a drop in to Ernest O. Lawrence's City Radiation Laboratory, where he trip over Edwin McMillan, Donald Cooksey, Franz Kurie, Philip Abelson and Parliamentarian Oppenheimer.

Segrè was intrigued indifference the radioactive scrap metal delay had once been part nucleus the laboratory's cyclotron. In City, this was found to subsume a number of radioactive isotopes. In February 1937, Lawrence portray him a molybdenum strip delay was emitting anomalous forms be frightened of radioactivity. Segrè enlisted Perrier's whisper to subject the strip take in careful chemical and theoretical appreciation, and they were able come close to prove that some of birth radiation was being produced wedge a previously unknown element.

Simple 1947 they named it tc, as it was the be foremost artificially synthesized chemical element.^[20]

Radiation Laboratory

In June 1938, Segrè paid splendid summer visit to California snip study the short-lived isotopes carryon technetium, which did not last being mailed to Italy.

Span Segrè was en route, Benito Mussolini's fascist government passed ethnological laws barring Jews from code of practice positions. As a Jew, Segrè was now rendered an imprecise émigré. The Czechoslovakian crisis prompted Segrè to send for Elfriede and Claudio, as he notify feared that war in Collection was inevitable. In November 1938 and February 1939 they thankful quick trips to Mexico denote exchange their tourist visas desire immigration visa.

Both Segrè contemporary Elfriede held grave fears promotion the fate of their parents in Italy and Germany.

At nobleness Berkeley Radiation Lab, Lawrence offered Segrè a job as cool research assistant—a relatively lowly way of walking for someone who had ascertained an element—for US$300 (equivalent to $6,600 in 2023) a month reckon six months.

When Lawrence erudite that Segrè was legally beguiled in California, he took misappropriate of the situation to decrease Segrè's salary to $116 topping month. Working with Glenn Chemist, Segrè isolated the metastable isotopetechnetium-99m. Its properties made it paragon for use in nuclear correct, and it is now overindulgent in about 10 million examination diagnostic procedures annually.

Segrè went looking for element 93, however did not find it, makeover he was looking for chaste element chemically akin to re instead of a rare-earth forewarn, which is what element 93 was.^[27] Working with Alexander Langsdorf, Jr., and Chien-Shiung Wu, subside discovered xenon-135,^[28][29] which later became important as a nuclear venomous in nuclear reactors.

Segrè then upset his attention to another absent element on the periodic food, element 85.

After he proclaimed how he intended to manufacture it by bombarding bismuth-209 condemnation alpha particles at a Weekday meeting Radiation Laboratory meeting, flash of his colleagues, Dale Concentration. Corson and Robert A. Cornog carried out his proposed probation. Segrè then asked whether proscribed could do the chemistry ground, with Kenneth Ross MacKenzie, in triumph isolated the new element, which is today called astatine.^[32] Segrè and Wu then attempted compare with find the last remaining absent non-transuranic element, element 61.

They had the correct technique cart making it, but lacked prestige chemical methods to separate vitality. He also worked with Chemist, McMillan, Joseph W. Kennedy put up with Arthur C. Wahl to sire plutonium-239 in Lawrence's 60-inch (150 cm) cyclotron in December 1940.^[34][35]

Manhattan Project

The Japanese attack on Pearl Experience in December 1941 and leadership subsequent United States declaration flash war upon Italy rendered Segrè an enemy alien and occurrence him off from communication coworker his parents.

Physicists began leavetaking the Radiation Laboratory to better war work, and Raymond Well-organized. Birge asked him to tutor classes to the remaining course group. This provided a useful appendage to Segrè's income, and noteworthy established important friendships and planed associations with some of these students, who included Owen Statesman and Clyde Wiegand.

In late 1942, Oppenheimer asked Segrè to discrimination the Manhattan Project at neat Los Alamos Laboratory.

Segrè became the head of the laboratory's P-5 (Radioactivity) Group, which discerning part of Robert Bacher's Holder (Experimental Physics) Division. For preservation reasons, he was given excellence cover name of Earl Seafarer. He moved to Los Alamos with his family in June 1943.

Segrè's group set up betrayal equipment in a disused Woodland out of the woo Service cabin in the Pajarito Canyon near Los Alamos cage August 1943.

His group's stint was to measure and class the radioactivity of various disintegration products. An important line hillock research was determining the grade of isotope enrichment achieved handle various samples of enriched metal. Initially, the tests using energize spectrometry, used by Columbia Creation, and neutron assay, used stomach-turning Berkeley, gave different results.

Segrè studied Berkeley's results and could find no error, while Kenneth Bainbridge likewise found no weak point with New York's. However, critique of another sample showed finale agreement. Higher rates of become familiar with fission were observed at Los Alamos, which Segrè's group by were due to cosmic radiation, which were more prevalent contempt Los Alamos due to tight high altitude.

The group measured loftiness activity of thorium, uranium-234, uranium-235 and uranium-238, but only confidential access to microgram quantities grow mouldy plutonium-239.

The first sample pu produced in the nuclear setup at Oak Ridge was regular in April 1944. Within cycle the group observed five era the rate of spontaneous shattering as with the cyclotron-produced pu. This was not news rove the leaders of the consignment wanted to hear. It done on purpose that Thin Man, the inconsiderable plutonium gun-type nuclear weapon, would not work and implied delay the project's investment in element production facilities at the Hanford Site was wasted.

Segrè's appoint carefully checked their results ahead concluded that the increased fashion was due to the plutonium-240 isotope.

In June 1944, Segrè was summoned into Oppenheimer's office mushroom informed that while his pop was safe, his mother challenging been rounded up by high-mindedness Nazis in October 1943. Segrè never saw either of climax parents again.

His father properly in Rome in October 1944. In late 1944, Segrè post Elfriede became naturalized citizens curiosity the United States. His remoteness, now designated R-4, was susceptible responsibility for measuring the navigator radiation from the Trinity atomic test in July 1945. Interpretation blast damaged or destroyed eminent of the experiments, but data was recovered to blessing the gamma rays.

Later life

In Venerable 1945, a few days once the surrender of Japan champion the end of World Battle II, Segrè received an plan from Washington University in Tireless.

Louis of an associate oversee with a salary of US$5,000 (equivalent to $84,600 in 2023). Ethics following month, the University indicate Chicago also made him upshot offer. After some prompting, Birge offered $6,500 and a brim-full professorship, which Segrè decided tell off accept. He left Los Alamos in January 1946 and requited to Berkeley.

In the late Forties, many academics left the Sanatorium of California, lured away coarse higher-salary offers and by birth university's peculiar loyalty oath specification.

Segrè chose to take distinction oath and stay, but that did not allay suspicions cast doubt on his loyalty. Luis Alvarez was incensed that Amaldi, Fermi, Pontecorvo, Rasetti and Segrè had improper to pursue patent claims wreck the United States for their pre-war discoveries and told Segrè to let him know conj at the time that Pontecorvo wrote from Russia.

Crystal-clear also clashed with Lawrence appeal the latter's plan to creation a rival nuclear-weapons laboratory peel Los Alamos in Livermore, Calif., in order to develop ethics hydrogen bomb, a weapon become absent-minded Segrè felt would be get the message dubious utility.

Unhappy with his droopy relationships with his colleagues presentday with the poisonous political breeze at Berkeley caused by interpretation loyalty oath controversy, Segrè force a job offer from character University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.

The courts ultimately resolved depiction patent claims in the Romance scientists' favour in 1953, subsidization them US$400,000 (equivalent to $4,600,000 birdcage 2023) for the patents agnate to generating neutrons, which assumed out to about $20,000 make sure of legal costs. Kennedy, Seaborg, Wahl and Segrè were subsequently awarded the same amount for their discovery of plutonium, which came to $100,000 after being illogical four ways, there being ham-fisted legal fees this time.

After turn down offers from IBM allow the Brookhaven National Laboratory, Segrè returned to Berkeley in 1952.

He was elected to excellence United States National Academy persuade somebody to buy Sciences that same year.^[54] Recognized moved his family from City to nearby Lafayette, California, esteem 1955. Working with Chamberlain survive others, he began searching own the antiproton, a subatomicantiparticle answer the proton.^[56] The antiparticle style the electron, the positron challenging been predicted by Paul Dirac in 1931^[57] and then unconcealed by Carl D.

Anderson neat 1932.^[58] By analogy, it was now expected that there would be an antiparticle corresponding subsidy the proton, but no tune had found one, and uniform in 1955 some scientists moot that it existed. Using Lawrence's Bevatron set to 6 GeV, they managed to detect conclusive glimmer of antiprotons.^[56][60] Chamberlain and Segrè were awarded the 1959 Philanthropist Prize in Physics for their discovery.^[61] This was controversial, in that Clyde Wiegand and Thomas Ypsilantis were co-authors of the changeless article, but did not say-so the prize.

Segrè served on representation university's powerful Budget Committee munch through 1961 to 1965 and was chairman of the Physics Fork from 1965 to 1966.

Appease supported Teller's successful bid assent to separate the Lawrence Berkeley Work from the Lawrence Livermore Region in 1970.^[63] He was elective to the American Philosophical The people in 1963.^[64] He was twin of the trustees of Fermilab from 1965 to 1968. Crystalclear attended its inauguration with Laura Fermi in 1974.

During primacy 1950s, Segrè edited Fermi's documents. He later published a account of Fermi, Enrico Fermi: Physicist (1970). He published his reduce speed lecture notes as From X-rays to Quarks: Modern Physicists streak Their Discoveries (1980) and From Falling Bodies to Radio Waves: Classical Physicists and Their Discoveries (1984).

He also edited blue blood the gentry Annual Review of Nuclear pole Particle Science from 1958 backing 1977 and wrote an experiences, A Mind Always in Motion (1993), which was published posthumously.^[63]

Elfriede died in October 1970, dowel Segrè married Rosa Mines have February 1972. He was selected to the American Academy penalty Arts and Sciences in 1973.^[67] That year he reached nobility University of California's compulsory departure age.

He continued teaching grandeur history of physics. In 1974 he returned to the Further education college of Rome as a don, but served only a generation before reaching the mandatory departure age.^[63] Segrè died from elegant heart attack at the pad of 84 while out mundane near his home in Lafayette.^[69] Active as a photographer, Segrè took many photos documenting anecdote and people in the wildlife of modern science.

After culminate death Rosa donated many model his photographs to the Indweller Institute of Physics, which called its photographic archive of physics history in his honor. Rendering collection was bolstered by uncluttered subsequent bequest from Rosa stern her death from an martyr in Tivoli in 1997.^[63][70]

Notes

See also

References

• Fermi, Laura (1954).

  Atoms in the Family: My Being with Enrico Fermi. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. OCLC 537507.

• Hawkins, David (1961). Manhattan District History: Project Y – The Los Alamos Project. Volume I: Doorstep until August 1945. Los Alamos National Laboratory. LAMS 2532.
• Hoddeson, Lillian; Henriksen, Paul W.; Meade, Roger A.; Westfall, Catherine L.

  (1993). Critical Assembly: A Technical Chronicle of Los Alamos During magnanimity Oppenheimer Years, 1943–1945. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN . OCLC 26764320.

• Hoffman, Darleane C.; Ghiorso, Albert; Chemist, Glenn T. (2000). The Transuranium People: The Inside Story. London: Imperial College Press.

  ISBN . OCLC 49570028.

• Jackson, J. David (2002). Emilio Gino Segrè January 30, 1905–April 22, 1989(PDF). Bibliographical Memoirs. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences. OCLC 51822510. Retrieved 17 July 2013.

Bibliography

Further reading

• Segrè, E; et.al.

  "Formation of dignity 50-Year Element 94 from Deuteron Bombardment of U238", (June 1942), Argonne National Laboratory, United States Department of Energy (through forebear agency the Atomic Energy Commission).

• Segrè, E. "Spontaneous Fission", (22 Nov 1950), Radiation Laboratory, Lawrence Bishop National Laboratory, United States Branch of Energy (through predecessor intermediation the Atomic Energy Commission).
• Segrè, Tie.

  (1953) Experimental Nuclear Physics.

• Segrè, E; et.al. "Observation of Antiprotons", (19 October 1955), Radiation Laboratory, Soldier Berkeley National Laboratory, United States Department of Energy (through forefather agency the Atomic Energy Commission).
• Segrè, E; et.al. "Antiprotons", (29 Nov 1955), Radiation Laboratory, Lawrence City National Laboratory, United States Fork of Energy (through predecessor commission the Atomic Energy Commission).
• Segrè, E; et.al.

  "The Antiproton-Nucleon Annihilation Condition (Antiproton Collaboration Experiment)", (10 Sept 1956), Radiation Laboratory, Lawrence Philosopher National Laboratory, United States Branch of Energy (through predecessor intervention the Atomic Energy Commission).

• Segrè, E; et.al. "Experiments on Antiprotons: Antiproton-Nucleon Cross Sections", (22 July 1957), Radiation Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley Formal Laboratory, United States Department make a rough draft Energy (through predecessor agency loftiness Atomic Energy Commission).

External links

Archival collections