Enrico Fermi (Italian: [enˈriːko ˈfermi]; 29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954) was an Italian-American physicist known for creating the world’s first artificial nuclear reactor, called the Chicago Pile-1, and for being part of the Manhattan Project. He won the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for showing how new radioactive elements can be made using neutrons and for discovering nuclear reactions caused by slow neutrons. He is often called the “architect of the nuclear age” and the “architect of the atomic bomb.” Fermi was one of the few scientists who excelled in both theoretical and experimental physics. He and his colleagues developed several patents about nuclear power, which the U.S. government later used. He made important contributions to statistical mechanics, quantum theory, and nuclear and particle physics.

Fermi’s first major work was in statistical mechanics. After Wolfgang Pauli created the exclusion principle in 1925, Fermi used it to study an ideal gas, leading to a statistical method now called Fermi–Dirac statistics. Today, particles that follow the exclusion principle are called “fermions.” Pauli later suggested the existence of a particle, called the neutrino, that is emitted during beta decay to balance energy. Fermi developed a model that included this particle, and his theory, now called the weak interaction, describes one of the four fundamental forces in nature. Through experiments with neutrons, Fermi found that slow neutrons are more likely to be captured by atomic nuclei than fast ones. He created the Fermi age equation to explain this. When he bombarded thorium and uranium with slow neutrons, he believed he had made new elements. Though he was awarded the Nobel Prize for this, later studies showed the results were actually nuclear fission products.

In 1938, Fermi left Italy to avoid new laws that harmed his Jewish wife, Laura Capon. He moved to the United States and worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. Fermi led the team at the University of Chicago that built Chicago Pile-1, which achieved a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction on 2 December 1942. He was present when the X-10 Graphite Reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the B Reactor at the Hanford Site also reached criticality. At Los Alamos, he led F Division, which helped develop Edward Teller’s thermonuclear “Super” bomb. He was at the Trinity test on 16 July 1945, the first test of a full nuclear bomb, and used his Fermi method to estimate the bomb’s power.

After the war, Fermi helped create the Institute for Nuclear Studies in Chicago and worked on the General Advisory Committee, led by J. Robert Oppenheimer, which advised the Atomic Energy Commission. After the Soviet Union tested its first fission bomb in 1949, Fermi argued against making a hydrogen bomb for both moral and technical reasons. He supported Oppenheimer during the 1954 hearing that led to Oppenheimer losing his security clearance.

Fermi made important discoveries in particle physics, especially about pions and muons. He also suggested that cosmic rays are created when materials are accelerated by magnetic fields in space. Many awards, concepts, and institutions are named after him, including the Fermi 1 reactor, the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station, the Enrico Fermi Award, the Enrico Fermi Institute, Fermilab, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, the Fermi paradox, and the element fermium. He is one of 16 scientists with elements named after them.

Early life

Enrico Fermi was born in Rome, Italy, on September 29, 1901. He was the third child of Alberto Fermi, who worked as a division head in the Ministry of Railways, and Ida de Gattis, who taught elementary school. His sister, Maria, was two years older than him, and his brother, Giulio, was one year older. When the two boys were young, they were sent to a rural area to be cared for by a nurse. Enrico later reunited with his family in Rome when he was two and a half years old. Even though he was baptized as a Catholic because of his grandparents, his family was not very religious. Enrico remained an agnostic throughout his adult life. As a young boy, he shared interests with his brother Giulio, such as building electric motors and playing with mechanical and electrical toys. Giulio died in 1915 during an operation for a throat infection, and Maria died in 1959 in an airplane crash near Milan.

At a local market in Campo de' Fiori, Fermi found a physics book titled Elementorum physicae mathematicae, a 900-page book written in Latin by Jesuit Father Andrea Caraffa, a professor at the Collegio Romano. The book covered mathematics, classical mechanics, astronomy, optics, and acoustics as they were understood when it was published in 1840. With a friend named Enrico Persico, who also had an interest in science, Fermi worked on projects such as building gyroscopes and measuring Earth's gravity.

Enrico often met his father, Alberto, in front of his office after work. In 1914, he met his father’s colleague, Adolfo Amidei, who sometimes walked with Alberto on his way home. Enrico learned that Adolfo was interested in mathematics and physics and asked him a question about geometry. Adolfo realized that the young Fermi was referring to projective geometry and gave him a book on the subject written by Theodor Reye. Two months later, Fermi returned the book, having solved all the problems at the end of the book, some of which Adolfo considered difficult. After checking Fermi’s work, Adolfo said he was “a prodigy, at least with respect to geometry” and continued to guide Fermi by giving him more books on physics and mathematics. Adolfo noted that Fermi had a strong memory, which allowed him to recall the content of books even after reading them once.

Scuola Normale Superiorein Pisa

Enrico Fermi graduated from high school in July 1918, skipping the third year of school. With the help of his teacher, Amidei, Fermi learned German so he could read scientific papers written in that language. He applied to the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. Amidei believed this school would offer better opportunities for Fermi’s education than the Sapienza University of Rome. Fermi’s parents, who had already lost one child, were not happy about him living away from home for four years. Fermi passed a difficult entrance exam with top marks. The exam required an essay on the topic of "Specific characteristics of Sounds." At 17, Fermi used a mathematical method called Fourier analysis to solve a complex equation about a vibrating rod. After speaking with Fermi, the examiner predicted he would become an outstanding physicist.

At the Scuola Normale Superiore, Fermi played jokes with his classmate Franco Rasetti, and the two became close friends and worked together on research. His teacher, Luigi Puccianti, who led the physics lab, said there was little he could teach Fermi and often asked Fermi to teach him instead. Because of his deep knowledge of quantum physics, Puccianti asked Fermi to organize seminars on the topic. During this time, Fermi studied tensor calculus, a mathematical tool important for understanding general relativity. Initially, Fermi chose mathematics as his major, but he soon switched to physics. He mostly taught himself, studying general relativity, quantum mechanics, and atomic physics.

In September 1920, Fermi joined the physics department at the Scuola. There were only three students in the department: Fermi, Rasetti, and Nello Carrara. Puccianti allowed them to use the lab freely for their projects. Fermi decided the group should study X-ray crystallography, and the three worked together to create a Laue photograph, which is an X-ray image of a crystal. In 1921, during his third year at the university, Fermi published his first scientific papers in the Italian journal Nuovo Cimento. The first paper, titled "On the dynamics of a rigid system of electrical charges in translational motion," used a mathematical concept called a tensor to describe mass. In classical physics, mass is a simple value, but in relativity, it changes with speed. The second paper, "On the electrostatics of a uniform gravitational field of electromagnetic charges," showed that a charge’s mass equals U/c, where U is the system’s electrostatic energy and c is the speed of light.

The first paper seemed to show a conflict between two theories about electromagnetic mass. Fermi explained the issue in a later paper, which was translated into German and published in a German journal in 1922. That same year, Fermi submitted a paper titled "On the phenomena occurring near a world line" to an Italian journal. In this work, he studied the Principle of Equivalence and introduced "Fermi coordinates," proving that space near a timeline behaves like a simple Euclidean space.

In July 1922, Fermi submitted his thesis, "A theorem on probability and some of its applications," to the Scuola Normale Superiore. He received his degree at the young age of 20. The thesis focused on X-ray diffraction images. At the time, theoretical physics was not widely accepted in Italy, so only experimental physics research was considered valid. Because Fermi was skilled in lab work, this did not stop him from pursuing his studies.

In 1923, while helping write an Italian edition of a book about Einstein’s relativity, Fermi noted that Einstein’s equation (E = mc²) hinted at a large amount of energy stored in atoms. He wrote that it might be impossible to release this energy safely, as doing so could cause destruction.

From 1923 to 1924, Fermi studied under Max Born at the University of Göttingen, where he met Werner Heisenberg and Pascual Jordan. Later, he studied in Leiden with Paul Ehrenfest, meeting Hendrik Lorentz and Albert Einstein. He also became friends with Samuel Goudsmit and Jan Tinbergen. From 1925 to 1926, Fermi taught math and physics at the University of Florence, working with Rasetti to study how magnetic fields affect mercury vapor. He also gave lectures on quantum mechanics and solid-state physics at the Sapienza University of Rome. When discussing the Schrödinger equation’s accuracy, Fermi often said, "It has no business to fit so well!"

In 1925, after Wolfgang Pauli introduced his exclusion principle, Fermi wrote a paper applying it to an ideal gas. His method described how particles behave in systems following the exclusion principle. This idea was later developed independently by Paul Dirac, who connected it to Bose-Einstein statistics. Today, this concept is called Fermi-Dirac statistics. Particles that follow the exclusion principle are now called "fermions," while those that do not are called "bosons."

Professor in Rome

In Italy, professorships were given through a competition called "concorso" when a position became available. Applicants were evaluated by a committee of professors based on their published work. Enrico Fermi applied for a position in mathematical physics at the University of Cagliari on Sardinia but was not chosen, as another candidate, Giovanni Giorgi, was selected instead. In 1926, when Fermi was 24 years old, he applied for a new professorship in theoretical physics at Sapienza University of Rome. This position was created by the Minister of Education at the request of Professor Orso Mario Corbino, who was a professor of experimental physics, director of the Institute of Physics, and a member of Benito Mussolini's government. Corbino also led the selection committee and hoped the new position would improve the quality and reputation of physics in Italy. Fermi was chosen over two other candidates, Enrico Persico and Aldo Pontremoli. Corbino helped Fermi recruit a team of scientists, including notable students like Edoardo Amaldi, Bruno Pontecorvo, Ettore Majorana, and Emilio Segrè, as well as Franco Rasetti, who became Fermi's assistant. These scientists were later nicknamed the "Via Panisperna boys" after the street where the Institute of Physics was located.

Fermi married Laura Capon, a science student at the university, on July 19, 1928. They had two children: Nella, born in January 1931, and Giulio, born in February 1936. On March 18, 1929, Mussolini appointed Fermi to the Royal Academy of Italy, and on April 27, Fermi joined the Fascist Party. Later, Fermi opposed Fascism when Mussolini passed racial laws in 1938 that targeted Jewish people, including Laura, and affected many of Fermi's research assistants.

During his time in Rome, Fermi and his team made significant contributions to both practical and theoretical physics. In 1928, he published Introduction to Atomic Physics, a textbook that helped Italian students learn about modern physics. Fermi also gave public lectures and wrote articles for scientists and teachers to share knowledge widely. He often gathered his colleagues and students to discuss problems from his own research. His work attracted international attention, including the German physicist Hans Bethe, who visited Rome as a Rockefeller Foundation fellow and collaborated with Fermi on a 1932 paper titled "On the Interaction between Two Electrons."

At the time, scientists were confused about beta decay, a process where an electron is emitted from an atomic nucleus. To explain this, physicist Wolfgang Pauli proposed the existence of a particle with no charge and little mass, which he called a "neutrino." Fermi developed this idea in a 1933 paper and later expanded it in a longer paper the next year. His theory, later called the "weak interaction," described one of the four fundamental forces of nature. The neutrino was discovered after Fermi's death, and his theory explained why it was so hard to detect. When Fermi submitted his paper to the journal Nature, it was rejected because the editor believed the ideas were too speculative. Fermi's biographer, David N. Schwartz, noted that Nature typically published short notes, not full theories, and suggested the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London would have been a better choice. Some scholars believe that Nature's rejection of Fermi's work encouraged young scientists, including Jewish and leftist colleagues, to stop boycotting German scientific journals after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. Fermi's theory was published in Italian and German before it appeared in English.

In January 1934, Irène Joliot-Curie and Frédéric Joliot announced they had used alpha particles to create radioactivity in elements. By March, Fermi's assistant Gian-Carlo Wick explained this using Fermi's theory of beta decay. Fermi then shifted to experimental physics, using neutrons, which James Chadwick had discovered in 1932. Neutrons have no electric charge, so they could penetrate atomic nuclei more easily than charged particles, without needing a particle accelerator. Fermi wanted to test if neutrons could induce radioactivity using a neutron source made by Rasetti with polonium and beryllium. However, this source was not strong enough, so Fermi replaced it with one using radon and beryllium. This new source emitted gamma rays, but Fermi believed they would not affect the experiment. He tested various elements, including platinum, aluminum, lead, and fluorine, and induced radioactivity in 22 elements. Fermi reported his findings in the Italian journal La Ricerca Scientifica on March 25, 1934.

Fermi and his team observed that radioactivity was easier to produce on a wooden table than on a marble one. He remembered that Joliot-Curie and Chadwick had found that paraffin wax slowed neutrons, so he used this to increase the experiment's success. When neutrons passed through paraffin wax, they caused much more radioactivity in silver.

Manhattan Project

Enrico Fermi arrived in New York City on January 2, 1939. He was quickly offered jobs at five universities and chose to work at Columbia University, where he had already taught during the summer of 1936. In December 1938, German scientists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann discovered the element barium after bombarding uranium with neutrons. Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch correctly explained this as nuclear fission. Frisch confirmed this discovery on January 13, 1939. Niels Bohr, a physicist, shared this information with others in the United States. Two Columbia University scientists, Isidor Isaac Rabi and Willis Lamb, learned about the discovery and told Fermi. However, Fermi later credited Lamb for this information.

Fermi had previously dismissed the idea of nuclear fission because of his calculations, but he had not considered the binding energy that occurs when a nucleus with an odd number of neutrons absorbs an extra neutron. This mistake made Fermi feel very embarrassed, as the elements he had helped discover were not transuranic elements but fission products. He added a note about this to his Nobel Prize speech.

At Columbia University, scientists decided to study the energy released during nuclear fission of uranium. On January 25, 1939, Fermi and a team conducted the first nuclear fission experiment in the United States in the basement of Pupin Hall. The team included Herbert L. Anderson, Eugene T. Booth, John R. Dunning, G. Norris Glasoe, and Francis G. Slack. The next day, the fifth Washington Conference on Theoretical Physics began in Washington, D.C., where news about nuclear fission was shared widely.

French scientists Hans von Halban, Lew Kowarski, and Frédéric Joliot-Curie showed that uranium bombarded by neutrons released more neutrons than it absorbed, suggesting a chain reaction was possible. Fermi and Anderson confirmed this a few weeks later. Leó Szilárd obtained 200 kilograms of uranium oxide from a Canadian company, allowing Fermi and Anderson to conduct larger experiments. Together, Fermi and Szilárd designed a device to create a self-sustaining nuclear reaction—a nuclear reactor. Fermi suggested using uranium oxide blocks and graphite as a neutron moderator instead of water, which would reduce neutron capture and make a chain reaction possible. Szilárd designed a pile of uranium oxide blocks and graphite bricks. Fermi, Szilárd, and Anderson published a paper titled "Neutron Production in Uranium." However, their different work habits and personalities made collaboration difficult.

Fermi was among the first to warn military leaders about the potential of nuclear energy. He gave a lecture on the topic at the Navy Department on March 18, 1939. The Navy agreed to fund $1,500 for further research at Columbia. Later that year, Szilárd, Eugene Wigner, and Edward Teller sent a letter signed by Albert Einstein to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, warning that Nazi Germany might build an atomic bomb. In response, Roosevelt formed the Advisory Committee on Uranium to investigate the matter.

The committee provided money for Fermi to buy graphite, and he built a pile of graphite bricks on the seventh floor of Pupin Hall. By August 1941, he had six tons of uranium oxide and thirty tons of graphite, which he used to build a larger pile in Schermerhorn Hall at Columbia.

The Advisory Committee on Uranium, now called the S-1 Section, met on December 18, 1941, as the United States entered World War II. Most research focused on producing enriched uranium, but Arthur Compton, a committee member, proposed using plutonium, which could be made in nuclear reactors by 1944. He decided to focus plutonium research at the University of Chicago. Fermi reluctantly moved, and his team joined the new Metallurgical Laboratory there.

Because the effects of a self-sustaining nuclear reaction were unknown, it was not safe to build the first reactor in the middle of a city. Compton found a location in Argonne Woods Forest Preserve, 20 miles from Chicago. Construction was delayed due to an industrial dispute, so Fermi convinced Compton to build the reactor in the squash court under the stands of the University of Chicago's Stagg Field. Construction began on November 6, 1942, and the reactor, called Chicago Pile-1, reached criticality on December 2. Fermi calculated that the reactor could achieve criticality before the entire pile was completed.

This experiment was a major milestone in energy research and reflected Fermi's careful planning and precise calculations. When the first self-sustained nuclear chain reaction was achieved, Compton called James B. Conant, chairman of the National Defense Research Committee.

To avoid public health risks, the reactor was moved to Argonne Woods. There, Fermi directed experiments on nuclear reactions and used the reactor for biological and medical research. Argonne initially operated as part of the University of Chicago but became an independent entity with Fermi as its director in May 1944.

On November 4, 1943, the air-cooled X-10 Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge reached criticality. Fermi was present in case of problems. This reactor provided data on reactor design, trained DuPont staff, and produced the first small amounts of plutonium. Fermi became an American citizen in July 1944, the earliest date allowed by law.

In September 1944, Fermi inserted the first uranium fuel slug into the B Reactor at the Hanford Site, a large-scale reactor designed to produce plutonium. The reactor, designed by Fermi's team and built by DuPont, was water-cooled. Over the next few days, 838 tubes were loaded, and the reactor reached criticality. On September 27, operators began withdrawing control rods to start production. At first, everything seemed normal, but by 6:30 a.m., the reactor shut down.

Postwar work

Enrico Fermi became the Charles H. Swift Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago on July 1, 1945. However, he and his family did not leave the Los Alamos Laboratory until December 31, 1945. In 1945, he was elected as a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. The Metallurgical Laboratory became the Argonne National Laboratory on July 1, 1946. This was the first national laboratory created by the Manhattan Project. The short distance between Chicago and Argonne allowed Fermi to work at both places. At Argonne, he continued his experimental physics research, studying neutron scattering with Leona Marshall. He also discussed theoretical physics with Maria Mayer, helping her develop ideas about spin-orbit coupling that later earned her a Nobel Prize.

The Manhattan Project was replaced by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) on January 1, 1947. Fermi served on the AEC General Advisory Committee, a scientific group led by Robert Oppenheimer. He also visited the Los Alamos National Laboratory for several weeks each year, where he worked with Nicholas Metropolis and John von Neumann on Rayleigh–Taylor instability, which studies what happens at the boundary between two fluids with different densities.

After the Soviet Union tested its first fission bomb in August 1949, Fermi and Isidor Rabi wrote a strong report for the committee, arguing against developing a hydrogen bomb for ethical and scientific reasons. Despite this, Fermi worked as a consultant on hydrogen bomb research at Los Alamos. Along with Stanislaw Ulam, he calculated that the amount of tritium needed for Edward Teller’s hydrogen bomb design would be too great, and even with that amount, a fusion reaction might not be guaranteed. Fermi also testified on behalf of Robert Oppenheimer during a 1954 security hearing, which led to Oppenheimer losing his security clearance.

Later in life, Fermi continued teaching at the University of Chicago, where he helped create what became the Enrico Fermi Institute. His PhD students after World War II included Owen Chamberlain, Geoffrey Chew, Jerome Friedman, Marvin Goldberger, Tsung-Dao Lee, Arthur Rosenfeld, and Sam Treiman. Jack Steinberger was a graduate student, and Mildred Dresselhaus was deeply influenced by Fermi during the year they overlapped as students. Fermi conducted important research in particle physics, especially on pions and muons. He first predicted pion-nucleon resonance using statistical methods, reasoning that precise answers were unnecessary if the theory was incorrect. In a paper coauthored with Chen Ning Yang, he suggested that pions might be made of smaller particles. This idea was later expanded by Shoichi Sakata. The quark model, which explains that pions are made of quarks, eventually replaced Sakata’s theory and supported Fermi’s approach.

Fermi wrote a paper titled "On the Origin of Cosmic Radiation," in which he proposed that cosmic rays are created when material is accelerated by magnetic fields in space. This idea led to a disagreement with Edward Teller. Fermi also studied magnetic fields in the spiral arms of galaxies. He considered what is now called the "Fermi paradox," which is the question of why no contact has been made with extraterrestrial life despite the high likelihood that it exists.

Near the end of his life, Fermi doubted whether society could make wise decisions about nuclear technology. He said:

Death

In October 1954, Fermi had an "exploratory" operation at Billings Memorial Hospital and then returned home. Fifty days later, he died from inoperable stomach cancer at his home in Chicago. He was 53 years old. Fermi believed working near the nuclear pile carried significant risks, but he continued his work because he thought the benefits were greater than the dangers to his own safety. Two of his graduate student assistants who worked near the pile also died from cancer.

A memorial service was held at the University of Chicago chapel. Colleagues Samuel K. Allison, Emilio Segrè, and Herbert L. Anderson spoke during the service to honor the loss of one of the world's "most brilliant and productive physicists." Fermi's body was buried at Oak Woods Cemetery, where a private graveside service for his immediate family was held by a Lutheran chaplain.

Impact and legacy

Enrico Fermi received many awards for his achievements. These include the Matteucci Medal in 1926, the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1938, the Hughes Medal in 1942, the Franklin Medal in 1947, and the Rumford Prize in 1953. In 1946, he was given the Medal for Merit for his work on the Manhattan Project. Fermi became a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1939 and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1950. The Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence, which honors many artists, scientists, and important figures in Italian history, has a plaque that remembers Fermi. In 1999, Time magazine listed Fermi as one of the top 100 people of the twentieth century. Fermi was known for being rare among 20th-century physicists because he excelled in both theoretical and experimental work. Emilio Segrè, a radiochemist and nuclear physicist, called Fermi "the last universal physicist in the tradition of great men of the 19th century" and said he "was the last person who knew all of physics of his day." Chemist and novelist C. P. Snow wrote that if Fermi had been born earlier, he might have discovered Rutherford’s atomic nucleus and developed Bohr’s theory of the hydrogen atom. He added that any description of Fermi might seem exaggerated.

Fermi was known as an inspiring teacher who paid close attention to detail, used simple explanations, and prepared his lectures carefully. Later, his lecture notes were published as books. His papers and notebooks are now kept at the University of Chicago. Victor Weisskopf said Fermi always found the simplest and most direct way to solve problems, avoiding unnecessary complexity. He preferred simple methods over complicated theories, even though he had strong mathematical skills. Fermi was famous for quickly solving difficult problems that others found challenging. His approach to making quick and approximate calculations became known as the "Fermi method" and is still taught today.

Fermi often mentioned that when Alessandro Volta worked in his laboratory, Volta did not know where the study of electricity would lead. Fermi is most remembered for his work on nuclear power and nuclear weapons, especially for creating the first nuclear reactor and developing the first atomic and hydrogen bombs. His scientific contributions have remained important over time. These include his theory of beta decay, his work on non-linear systems, his discovery of the effects of slow neutrons, his study of pion-nucleon collisions, and his Fermi–Dirac statistics. His idea that a pion was not a fundamental particle helped lead to the study of quarks and leptons.

Many things are named after Fermi. These include Fermilab, a particle accelerator and physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, which was renamed in his honor in 1974, and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, named after him in 2008 for his work on cosmic rays. Three nuclear reactors are named after him: Fermi 1 and Fermi 2 in Newport, Michigan; the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Power Plant in Trino Vercellese, Italy; and the RA-1 Enrico Fermi research reactor in Argentina. A synthetic element discovered in the debris from the 1952 Ivy Mike nuclear test was named Fermium, in honor of Fermi’s contributions. This makes him one of 16 scientists who have elements named after them.

Since 1956, the United States Atomic Energy Commission, and later the U.S. Energy Department, has given its highest honor, the Fermi Award, in his name. People who have received this award include Otto Hahn, Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Teller, and Hans Bethe.

Publications

• Introduction to Atomic Physics (in Italian). Published in Bologna by N. Zanichelli in 1928. OCLC 9653646.
• Physics for High Schools (in Italian). Published in Bologna by N. Zanichelli in 1929. OCLC 9653646.
• Molecules and Crystals (in Italian). Published in Bologna by N. Zanichelli in 1934. OCLC 19918218.
• Thermodynamics. Published in New York by Prentice Hall in 1937. OCLC 2379038.
• Physics for Technical Schools (in Italian). Published in Bologna by N. Zanichelli in 1938.
• Physics for Scientific High Schools (in Italian). Published in Bologna by N. Zanichelli in 1938. Co-authored with Edoardo Amaldi.
• Elementary Particles. Published in New Haven by Yale University Press in 1951. OCLC 362513.
• Notes on Quantum Mechanics. Published in Chicago by The University of Chicago Press in 1961. OCLC 1448078.

For a complete list of his works, see pages 75–78 in the reference section.

Patents

• US Patent 2206634 , "Process for the Production of Radioactive Substances", issued July 1940
• US Patent 2836554 , "Air Cooled Neutronic Reactor", issued April 1950
• US Patent 2524379 , "Neutron Velocity Selector", issued October 1950
• US Patent 2852461 , "Neutronic Reactor", issued September 1953
• US Patent 2708656 , "Neutronic Reactor", issued May 1955
• US Patent 2768134 , "Testing Material in a Neutronic Reactor", issued October 1956
• US Patent 2780595 , "Test Exponential Pile", issued February 1957
• US Patent 2798847 , "Method of Operating a Neutronic Reactor", issued July 1957
• US Patent 2807581 , "Neutronic Reactor", issued September 1957
• US Patent 2807727 , "Neutronic Reactor Shield", issued September 1957
• US Patent 2813070 , "Method of Sustaining a Neutronic Chain Reacting System", issued November 1957
• US Patent 2837477 , "Chain Reacting System", issued June 1958
• US Patent 2931762 , "Neutronic Reactor", issued April 1960
• US Patent 2969307 , "Method of Testing Thermal Neutron Fissionable Material for Purity", issued January 1961