A Mind Always in Motion: The Autobiography of Emilio Segre

by Emilio Segre

Overview

Born in Italy to a well-to-do Jewish family, Emilio Segrè (1905-1989) became Enrico Fermi's first graduate student in 1928, contributed to the discovery of slow neutrons and was appointed director of the University of Palermo's physics laboratory in 1936. While visiting the Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, California in 1938, he learned that he had been dismissed from his Palermo post by Mussolini's Fascist regime. Ernest O. Lawrence hired him to work on the cyclotron at Berkeley with Luis Alvarez, Edwin McMillan, and Glenn Seaborg. Segrè was one of the first to join Oppenheimer at Los Alamos, where he became a group leader on the Manhattan Project. In 1959, he won the Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery of the antiproton. He was a professor of physics at UC Berkeley from 1946 until 1972.

"[A] readable, absorbing, interesting autobiography... A valuable contribution by a person who witnessed the development of much of modern nuclear physics. Segrè's description of the historic neutron experiments performed in Rome during the mid-1930s by Enrico Fermi's group, of which Segrè was a member, is of inestimable worth." -- Glenn T. Seaborg, Physics Today

"A Mind Always in Motion is Emilio Segrè's account -- published four years after his death in 1989 -- of his personal life and his life in physics... It is absorbing, moving in places and frequently revealing. Segrè noted in his preface, 'I have not sought to display manners and tact I never had, and I have tried to treat myself no better than any one else.' He ably succeeded in these purposes." -- Daniel J. Kevles, Nature

"For general readers with an interest in the history of nuclear physics, Segrè... is among the most personable witnesses." -- Publishers Weekly

Product Details

BN ID:	2940156788057
Publisher:	Plunkett Lake Press
Publication date:	10/18/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	332
File size:	10 MB

About the Author

Born in Tivoli, Italy, Emilio Segrè (1905-1989) enrolled at the University of Rome in engineering but switched to physics, joining Enrico Fermi’s research students, a group known as the “Ragazzi di via Panisperna”, renowned for prolific pioneering work in nuclear physics. Segrè graduated in 1928, the first of Fermi’s students, and with the Rome group, participated in the discovery of slow neutrons. In 1937, as professor at the University of Palermo, he co-discovered technetium, the first artificially synthesized element that does not occur in nature.

In 1938, when Mussolini passed antisemitic laws barring Jews from university positions, Segrè was on a research visit at the University of California (Berkeley); he stayed there temporarily at the Radiation Laboratory, before receiving a permanent appointment. In 1940, Segrè and his colleagues discovered astatine and plutonium-239, subsequently used to make the atom bomb.

Fermi immigrated to the United States shortly after Segrè, and their collaboration continued. During 1943-46, Segrè led the Manhattan Project’s Radioactivity Group at Los Alamos. He was a professor of physics at UC Berkeley from 1946 until 1972. In 1959, he won the Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery of the antiproton, with Owen Chamberlain.

In addition to his scientific papers, Segrè wrote a biography of Fermi, Enrico Fermi: Physicist, his autobiography A Mind Always in Motion and two volumes on the history of physics, From Falling Bodies to Radio Waves and From X-rays to Quarks. His scientific books include Nuclei & Particles, still used today, and E. Fermi Collected Papers. An avid photographer, Segrè recorded events and people in the development of modern physics. He donated his collection of photos to the American Institute of Physics, which named it the Emilio Segrè Visual Archives in his honor.