CHAPTER ONE

PRODIGY

ON THE STREETS OF ROME, NOT FAR FROM THE CENTRAL TRAIN station, a middle-aged engineer meets an adolescent boy, the son of a colleague. The boy wants to talk about mathematics and science. The engineer quickly realizes that he is dealing with someone who has a profound gift for the subject matter, a sponge who absorbs complex ideas faster and more thoroughly than seems possible. The engineer decides to take the lad under his wing and give him a thorough education in mathematics and physics, one that goes far beyond what is available in the boy’s high school.

It is impossible to know what might have happened if thirteen-year-old Enrico Fermi had not met his father’s friend and colleague Adolfo Amidei during the summer of 1914 and if Amidei had not taken a deep and sustained interest in the adolescent and his scientific education. How many promising intellects have withered on the vine because no one was nearby to cultivate them? What we do know is that Amidei decided to give young Enrico Fermi an undergraduate education in mathematics and physics, thus beginning the transformation of a teenage Roman boy into a master physicist.

ENRICO FERMI’S FATHER, ALBERTO, ARRIVED IN ROME IN THE 1880S in pursuit of his career at the Italian Ministry of Railroads. He was born in north-central Italy near the town of Piacenza, nestled in the fertile Po Valley some forty miles southeast of Milan and twenty-five miles due west of Cremona, the famous home to the great violin makers of the seventeenth century Antonio Stradivari and Andrea Guarneri. The Fermis had worked the land in the region of Piacenza for centuries, but Alberto’s father, Stefano, was ambitious and found himself an administrative job with a local nobleman, the Duke of Parma. Alberto, the second of Stefano’s children, did well in the local high school, but the family did not have the financial wherewithal to send him to university. He was, however, quite bright and, like his father, ambitious. The combination enabled him to land a job with the Italian railroads.

The late nineteenth century found Italy in the midst of a belated but intense period of industrialization. Unification of the country in 1870 set off a national effort to catch up with the northern European industrial powerhouses. One result was rapid urbanization. Rome, a sleepy midsized city of about 150,000 in 1849, when the founder of modern Italy, Giuseppe Garibaldi, first attempted to bring it into a unified Italian state, grew to slightly over 225,000 people at the time of unification in 1870. By 1901 it had doubled in size to some 460,000 residents. Any such dramatic increase in an urban population places extraordinary demands on a city’s infrastructure. In the case of Rome, entire new residential sections were thrown up virtually overnight, fundamentally changing the look and feel of the city, particularly in the elevated eastern section, perched above the Quirinal, Viminal, and Esquiline Hills.

Another result was the rapid development of a national railroad system that, though predominantly focused on the more prosperous northern communities of Milan, Genoa, and Turin, provided both employment and a certain cultural cachet for Roman workers, as well. Italians were, and remain today, proud of their train system. Because it was developed somewhat later than the English and French railway systems, Italy’s railroad benefited from technological advances unavailable during the earlier efforts of its industrial neighbors to the north. It provided employment for laborers and for the better educated technological elite and quickly moved through a series of regional mergers to centralized national ownership. The Ministry of Railroads was a prestigious place to work, and Alberto could be legitimately proud of his career.

In the early years his work had moved him from town to town, and he ended up in Rome around 1888. Quickly recognizing his abilities, his employers promoted him first to accountant, then to inspector, and eventually to Capo Divisione, a fairly high level in the Italian civil service roughly equivalent to a brigadier general in the Italian military. By the time Enrico was born, in 1901, Alberto had even been named a Cavaliere, or knight. Though not quite as prestigious as its British counterpart, the title reflected the value his employers placed on his skills and performance. More titles were to follow.

In surviving photographs, Alberto appears reserved and even a bit aloof. Attractive but intense eyes peer out from behind wire-rimmed glasses, set above hollow cheeks and a mouth obscured by a generous, and presumably fashionable, handlebar moustache. Setting aside the complete lack of humor in his eyes, one could imagine him singing Verdi arias while shaving, a penchant commented upon by Emilio Segrè, the Italian physicist. He clearly had ability and ambition and climbed the bureaucratic ladder at the ministry with little trouble.

Along the way, he met a woman named Ida de Gattis. Ida came from Bari, just above the “heel” of the Italian boot in the southeast of the country. She was a schoolteacher and younger than Alberto by some thirteen years. Trim and attractive, with delicate features and soulful, gentle, timid eyes, she caught Alberto’s attention, and they married in 1898. The newlyweds moved to an apartment not far from Rome’s central train station, Termini, at Via Gaeta 19.

The neighborhood just northwest of Termini was designed to accommodate the influx of workers to the new Italian capital in the most efficient and direct way possible. Streets formed a grid pattern and were lined with small and relatively undistinguished apartment buildings painted in a variety of Mediterranean pastel colors. Via Gaeta 19 stands today, a five-story ochre edifice with two apartments on each floor and a plaque indicating its illustrious pedigree as Enrico Fermi’s birthplace. Do Not Disturb signs hang above the doorbells of the two apartments on the third floor, presumably to ward off pilgrims to Enrico Fermi’s first home.

Here, Ida gave birth to three children: Maria in 1899, Giulio in 1900, and Enrico in 1901. Perhaps overwhelmed by the arrival of three infants in quick succession, or perhaps because as the wife of a secure and increasingly prosperous civil servant she felt she had the resources and social position to do so, Ida Fermi packed Giulio and Enrico off with nannies to the countryside almost as soon as each was born, a practice common among wealthier Romans. Maria stayed home under Ida’s direct care. We do not know whether the brothers were kept together, nor do we know when Giulio arrived home, but it seems to have been before Enrico. Enrico’s wife, Laura, later wrote that, owing to “delicate health,” Enrico was kept in the countryside for two and a half years. At that point he was returned to Rome and, confronting his real family for the first time, he burst into tears of fright. Ida delivered a stern scolding. Crying was forbidden in her household. He quieted down, and from that time on, Laura speculates, he was responsive to strict authority.

FIGURE 1.1. Giulio, Enrico, and Maria Fermi, 1904. Courtesy of Rachel Fermi.

Giulio and Enrico were inseparable. Enrico was somewhat shy and awkward, and Giulio evidently decided that he would be Enrico’s constant companion and protector. The relationship is apparent in one of the first portraits of all three children, taken in 1904. Maria stands at the right side of the frame, strong and proud, while the brothers hold hands at the left side of the frame, Giulio offering protection to his timid younger brother.

It was not long before the boys became interested in science. Perhaps they were inspired by Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of radio, who, in the first decades of the twentieth century, was grabbing headlines around the world with his experiments in electricity. Although much of his work was done in Britain, Marconi had become a hero in his native Italy. In the process, he served as an inspiration to countless Italian children, and it would have been strange indeed if the brothers did not come to worship him. As they grew older the two boys became obsessed with electricity, engineering, and everything related. They would come home from school and spend their free time designing and making electric motors, mechanical gadgets, and other devices. Like many boys of their age, they were also inspired by the dawn of the age of powered flight and reportedly designed an aircraft engine that impressed experts. They ate, drank, and slept science and technology.

The boys were apparently equally bright, but there the similarity ended. As a child Enrico was quiet and withdrawn, always most comfortable in the presence of his outgoing, more socially adept older brother. When very young he had a bit of a temper, which earned him the family nickname “little match,” but he eventually learned to control that. Later in life Enrico developed a robust, sturdy, even gregarious presence, but as a child he was distinctly delicate and introverted, perhaps taking after his mother. Giulio had greater physical presence, not only because he was a year older but because he cut a more social, more verbal, outgoing figure, and initially he was a better student. He was also, according to the accepted narrative, his mother’s favorite. Enrico was a slow starter, physically awkward, not particularly articulate, and incapable of making a good impression during his first years of school. This began to change, though, and somewhere along the way Enrico developed an affinity for mathematics. Although the main fare of Italian elementary education at the time was classical studies, Enrico began to impress teachers and became one of the top students in his class. The brothers spent time after school supplementing their somewhat mediocre technical education at a nondescript liceo (middle and high school) by reading science books and magazines, keeping themselves abreast of a rapidly scientific world. They may not have understood all that was going on around them, but they must have been aware of developments and excited by them.

FIGURE 1.2. Drawing of Giulio by Enrico, 1914. Photo by Susan Schwartz. Courtesy of Department of Physics library, University of Pisa.

In the archives of the University of Pisa’s physics department resides a drawing that Fermi made of his brother, dated June 20, 1914. Enrico was no artist, but he enjoyed doodling and sketching, and the profile he drafted of his brother, with obvious care, affection, and attention to detail, demonstrates better than perhaps anything else his feelings toward Giulio.

Less clear is the relationship that Enrico had during early childhood with his older sister, Maria. It may be that the two brothers created a hermetically sealed bubble around themselves, with little room for anyone else. It may also be that, from a cultural point of view, girls were neither expected nor encouraged to have scientific or technical interests, so Maria would probably have not been responsive even if the brothers had tried to engage her. We know that sometime later Enrico tried to talk to Maria about a physics book he picked up at a used bookstall, but she paid little attention. At this point in his life, his relationship with his sister seems to have been distant, particularly in contrast with the relationship with Giulio.

IN 1908 THE FAMILY MOVED FROM VIA GAETA TO A LARGER APARTMENT building a few blocks away in Via Principe Umberto. They had more space, but still no hot water. It was home for Enrico until he left for university in 1918.

Many photographs of the Fermi children have come down to us from this period, suggesting the Fermi family’s relatively comfortable financial circumstances. Alberto’s income was such that photographic portraits and even some candid photography were regular features of family life. In many of these photographs, Giulio and Maria have bright, engaged expressions, while Enrico usually looks dreamy and distracted, reserved, and somewhat uncomfortable. Ida has a slightly nervous, anxious look about her. Alberto is generally absent.

ON JANUARY 12, 1915, GIULIO DIED.

The boy developed an abscess in his throat, and Ida and Maria accompanied Giulio to the hospital to have it removed surgically. Doctors assured Ida that the operation was routine, an outpatient procedure, and there was nothing to be worried about. As Laura Fermi describes it:

On the appointed morning Mrs. Fermi and Maria accompanied him to the hospital and set themselves to wait quietly in the hall. Suddenly there was a great commotion. Nurses rushed into the hall, saying aimlessly, “Don’t worry; you should not worry.” Their tone was strained. The surgeon came. He asked the women to keep calm. He could not explain, he could not quite understand himself what had happened. The boy had died before the anesthesia was completed.

She concludes by observing, “The blow could not have been heavier, nor the family less prepared to receive it.”

Ever since returning home from his first two years in the countryside, Fermi and his brother had been inseparable. Enrico had relied heavily on his more outgoing sibling. Their bond was probably closer than any Enrico established later in life. He was devastated, but characteristically would not show it. It was the first of many incidents in which he forced himself to hide his emotions from the outside world, even from those closest to him. He did, however, resolve after several weeks to walk by the hospital where Giulio died, to confront the tragedy head-on to prove that he could deal with his grief.

Many years later he named his son after the brother he lost.

His mother’s grief was more visible, more sustained, and more debilitating. For years afterward she would break into tears suddenly, without provocation, and she spent long periods in a state of depression. She gradually withdrew from the family and died in the spring of 1924 at the age of fifty-three, an end certainly hastened by Giulio’s passing.

What might have happened had Giulio lived into adulthood? Knowing what Enrico would eventually accomplish, it is almost inconceivable that Enrico was the less talented of the two. Perhaps, incredibly, Giulio would have continued to outshine his little brother. Or maybe little Enrico would have eventually eclipsed the more socially adept Giulio. Maybe their interests would have diverged at a certain point, with one going into a field other than physics. Even more satisfying to contemplate, perhaps they might have worked together in brilliant harmony throughout their lives. In the end, however, we are left with unsatisfying, unanswerable questions.

AT ABOUT THIS TIME, TWO IMPORTANT PEOPLE ENTERED FERMI’S LIFE.

One was a classmate of Giulio’s named Enrico Persico. Persico had observed the brothers from afar for some time and had concluded that there was no room for a third wheel in the relationship. With Giulio gone, Persico reached out to the younger brother. His efforts were greeted enthusiastically. The two Enricos shared a love of science and technology, and soon they picked up where the two brothers had left off, absorbing science and math books, concocting experiments, and hanging out together whenever possible.

Persico was not much taller than Fermi, but he had the face of a tall man, dramatically elongated with a prominent aquiline nose, an almost nonexistent forehead, and eyes that sparkled with intelligence and good humor. He became something of a fixture around the Fermi household. Persico soon realized that his new friend was exceptional. Years later he wrote about these early days of their friendship:

We formed the habit of taking long walks together, crossing the city of Rome from one side to the other, discussing all kinds of subjects with the brashness of youth. But in these adolescent talks Enrico brought a precision of ideas, a self-assurance, and an originality which continually surprised me. Furthermore, in mathematics and in physics he showed a knowledge of many subjects well beyond what was taught at school. He knew these topics not in a scholastic fashion, but in such a way that he could use them with extreme facility and familiarity. For him, even at this time, to know a theorem or a law meant chiefly to know how to use it.

On these walks, the two Enricos would sometimes go hunting for books to satisfy their hunger for science, a quest that brought them from the grid streets of new Rome to the ancient, meandering alleys and passageways of the historic center of the city, off the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II. A left turn down Via del Paradiso, a particularly narrow alley, led them eventually to a large, ancient square, the Campo de’ Fiori, where every Wednesday a used book market attracted visitors in search of the odd special volume unavailable at regular bookstores. The boys scoured the stalls for items of interest. One particular edition they found was a nineteenth-century physics text by a Jesuit priest named Andrea Caraffa. A two-volume summary of all that was known about classical physics in 1840, the year of its publication, the boys quickly snapped it up, and Fermi absorbed it enthusiastically. As reported by Laura Fermi, he couldn’t stop talking about it to his sister, Maria, as he read it. Indeed, so enthralled was he that he barely noticed it had been written in Latin.

The two boys conducted a variety of experiments, some of them fairly sophisticated given the boys’ ages and education. They measured the density of Roman tap water. They calculated the strength of the gravitational and magnetic fields in Rome. They even tried to explain the behavior of a spinning top, even though neither knew the mathematics and physics that would have made this difficult problem a bit easier.

Particularly impressive, in retrospect, was Fermi’s knowledge of and enthusiasm for the theory of relativity. In later years Persico recalled extended conversations in which his young friend would enthuse about Einstein’s radical theory of gravity. Persico served as Fermi’s first “student,” if one discounts Enrico’s failed earlier attempts to interest Maria in the Caraffa book. Fermi enjoyed explaining ideas to his new friend, and Persico was a ready pupil, eagerly absorbing Fermi’s explanations of fairly complex concepts in physics. This was the first time that Enrico discovered his knack for conveying physics in ways that others less gifted could clearly understand, a knack that was to figure prominently in future years.

With Persico, Fermi was educating himself with the Caraffa volumes and other scientific books, and at liceo, he was exposed to Latin, Greek, history, and Italian literature. Fermi particularly enjoyed the traditional Italian epic poem “Orlando Furioso” (the Italian version of the “Song of Roland”) and in later years would impress friends with recitations of Dante from memory. Languages came easily to him, which may explain why he was hardly aware that the Caraffa volumes were written in Latin. In these subjects, he was a good student, but not extraordinary. It is clear that any advanced mathematics and physics he absorbed had nothing at all to do with what he was learning in school.

Fermi and Persico separated in 1918 when Fermi headed to Pisa for university and Persico remained in Rome. Over the next four years, they stayed in close touch by letter and saw each other often during school holidays. When Fermi eventually returned to Rome for good, they resumed their deep and lasting friendship.

Enrico had fun with other youngsters, as well, in the process developing a love of outdoor physical activity that would continue unabated throughout his life. He loved to play soccer and the perennial Italian schoolboy favorite French War, described by Laura Fermi as an Italian form of the Cops and Robbers game so popular in America, with just a hint of youthful nationalism. Yet he never drew personally close to these playmates, saving his friendship and affection for the other Enrico.

While the two Enricos’ bond strengthened as they explored the world of physics, another person entered Fermi’s life, an older man who knew a great deal more than either of the boys about mathematics and physics. This man would become central to Fermi’s early intellectual development.

ADOLFO AMIDEI WAS AN ENGINEER FOR THE RAILWAY COMPANY, with a rank of chief inspector—one rung above Alberto Fermi. In spite of the difference in rank, the two men became friends, and during the summer of 1914 they began to walk home together after work, which suggests that they lived close to one another.

Amidei was from Volterra, about fifty miles south of Pisa. Seven years younger than Alberto Fermi, he showed early technical proficiency and was admitted to the pure mathematics program at the University of Pisa, where he eventually broadened his studies to include physics. He joined the regional railway system as an engineer and junior inspector, and when various regional companies merged to create a national railway company, he made the move and was soon promoted to full inspector. By the time Amidei met young Enrico, he was a principal inspector. He was promoted repeatedly throughout his long and successful career and retired in 1940 with the title of Capo Compagnia 1a Classe. Along the way, like Alberto, he was named a Cavaliere by the Italian government.

Sometime during the summer of 1914, as Europe edged toward catastrophic war, Enrico began to meet his father after work and accompanied him on the forty-minute walk from the ministry to their apartment on Via Principe Umberto. Amidei occasionally joined the father and son, and soon Enrico learned that his father’s colleague was an engineer with a strong mathematics and physics background. He summoned up the courage to ask Amidei a particularly abstruse question: “Is it true that there is a branch of geometry in which important geometric properties are found without making use of the notion of measure?”

Amidei explained to the youth that this branch of mathematics was known as projective geometry. The idea puzzled Fermi, and he asked, “But how can such properties be used in practice—for example, by surveyors or engineers?” Amidei recalled that in Pisa he had studied a book on projective geometry by a German mathematician named Theodor Reye that had an excellent introduction explaining the practical uses of the discipline. He lent Enrico the book. Two months later Enrico revealed he had mastered the material, having worked through all of the theorems and solved all the problems at the back of the book. Amidei was understandably skeptical because the book had been difficult for him as a university student and, as a result, he had never completed the proofs himself. When Fermi gave Amidei the proofs for the theorems, the older man’s doubts vanished.

Enrico Fermi was thirteen years old.

This anecdote about Fermi’s grasp of projective geometry is the first example we have of what would become Fermi’s typical style of learning. He studied Reyes’s book by himself (or if it was with someone, it was with Giulio, who had not yet died) and, not satisfied with a cursory reading, worked through the proof of every theorem in the volume until he mastered the entire text. At this young age he displayed independence, thoroughness, and a willingness to grind through difficult material to ensure he mastered it. In this, as in all future work, he was never satisfied with a superficial grasp of a subject.

Amidei was suitably impressed and later wrote, “I became convinced that Enrico was truly a prodigy, at least with respect to geometry. I expressed this opinion to Enrico’s father, and his reply was: Yes, at school his son was a good student, but none of his professors had realized that the boy was a prodigy.”

This may not strictly be true. Fermi scholar Roberto Vergara Caffarelli cites a letter to Laura Fermi from Ida’s sister Olga, dated August 27, 1951, in which Olga recounts a chance encounter during this early period of Ida, Olga, the young Enrico, and Enrico’s teacher from his middle school. The teacher shook hands enthusiastically with mother and aunt, proclaiming the young Enrico a “second Galileo.” He may have been the first, but would not be the last, to do so. Of course memories shift and distort through the lens of time, and by 1951 Olga de Gattis’s memory of the event may well have been colored by Enrico’s subsequent development into a master physicist, but somewhere during this period a towering intellect started to make itself known. Amidei may not have been the first to notice it, but he certainly was the first to do anything about it.

Confronted with this young phenomenon, Amidei took a fateful step. Enrico had mentioned his forays into the bookstalls at Campo de’ Fiori and his efforts to learn physics and mathematics from odd books he picked up. It was just at the time when Fermi and his brother (and later Persico) would try to explain the physics of spinning tops. Responding to this, Amidei decided to impose a certain intellectual structure on Fermi’s education. He would guide the youth through a carefully arranged sequence of textbooks to educate him in undergraduate physics. He explained that a fundamental understanding of the behavior of a top would require a thorough grounding in classical mechanics, which first required a foundation in trigonometry, analytical geometry, algebra, and calculus, including differential equations. Once he had this under his belt, he assured his young friend, Enrico would find the equations of motion for a spinning top easier to understand.

This disciplined approach appealed to Fermi, although in retrospect it is apparent that he also continued his forays into physics textbooks independently of the informal but highly accelerated plan Amidei outlined. The curriculum does not look that much different from what a young entry-level physics undergraduate would undertake today. Amidei first intended to give Fermi a sufficiently strong foundation in mathematics to begin a serious study of classical mechanics.

Amidei sequenced the mathematics carefully over the next three years, beginning with trigonometry and moving through analytical geometry to calculus. It helped that Amidei was a proficient mathematician and that Italian mathematicians at that moment stood at the forefront of the field internationally. It also helped that Amidei was teaching a unique genius.

By 1917—Fermi was fifteen or sixteen—Amidei believed that Fermi was ready for a thorough course in classical mechanics and lent him the classic treatise on the subject by French mathematician Siméon-Denis Poisson, originally published in two volumes, in 1811 and 1833.

For the study of classical mechanics and the mathematics required to understand it, no better curriculum could be provided, not even today. Not only is the subject matter virtually unchanged since these books were written but also the volumes represent the very best thinking on the subjects they cover.

Years later Amidei remained astonished by Fermi’s ability to absorb material. Some forty years after the fact, he recalled that by the time Fermi graduated from liceo (in 1918, a year early):

I had already ascertained that when he read a book, even once, he knew it perfectly and didn’t forget it. For instance, I remember that when he returned the calculus book by [Ulisse] Dini I told him that he could keep it for another year or so in case he needed to refer to it again. I received this surprising reply: “Thank you, but that won’t be necessary because I’m certain to remember it. As a matter of fact, after a few years I’ll see the concepts in it even more clearly than now, and if I need a formula I’ll know how to derive it easily enough.”

Amidei’s efforts notwithstanding, Fermi could not keep himself from some side reading in physics. At the central public library of Rome, he tackled the magisterial five-volume, four-thousand-page Treatise on Physics by Russian physicist Orest Chwolson. Not for the faint of heart, it covers in depth every aspect of classical physics—mechanics, thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, optics, electromagnetic theory, even acoustics. After discovering that he had already mastered some thousand pages of the text, presumably as a result of his study of Poisson, he spent time every morning in the library poring over the balance of the book, assimilating its material, working out problems. It took him a little over a year, from August 1917 until September 1918, but master it he did.

According to Persico, he and Fermi also studied a relatively new book by British physicist Owen W. Richardson, The Electron Theory of Matter. Published in 1914, it was a graduate-level text, incorporating British physicist Joseph John (J. J.) Thomson’s 1897 discovery of the electron into the broader framework of electromagnetic theory. By the time they tackled it, the two youths had significant physics and mathematics under their respective belts. (A few years later, Fermi also recommended the book to his university friend Franco Rasetti.)

For Amidei, the experience of mentoring Fermi was sufficiently profound that he decided to write down statements made by the boy as a record for posterity—hence the reliability of his recollections four decades later.

For Fermi, as well, the experience was extraordinary. Here was an adult he could talk to about the subjects that mattered most to him, someone who cared enough to tutor him on all things related to mathematics and physics. It may also have been the first time Fermi fully realized his great gifts in these areas. Time and again he discovered that he understood the material Amidei threw at him faster and more comprehensively than Amidei ever could. An experience he would have throughout his subsequent education, it gave him a sense of confidence in his abilities that was only to grow in later years.

During this last year, Amidei inquired as to whether the young man, now sixteen years old, wanted to pursue mathematics or physics at university. Fermi’s reply was straightforward: “I studied mathematics with passion because I considered it necessary for the study of physics, to which I want to dedicate myself exclusively.” Mathematics was the means to an end. He would always be proud of his mathematical ability, sometimes to the point of boastfulness, but physics would always be his one true love.

Amidei understood that Fermi’s decision at such a young age to become a practicing physicist meant that Fermi needed to learn German. The world’s leading physics journals—most notably Annalen der Physik and Zeitschrift für Physik—were published in German. Amidei insisted, and Fermi complied, once again demonstrating his ability to quickly master a new language. When he arrived at university in the fall of 1918, he was, according to friends, reading German as he read Italian.

ALL OF THIS WAS TAKING PLACE AGAINST THE BACKDROP OF World War I.

When Italy entered the conflict in mid-1915, on the side of the Allies, neither Amidei nor Fermi’s father was drafted. They were too old and, also, to the extent that the railways were a strategic asset in the war, they both held important positions right where they were.

It may have been a relief for Amidei to have the distraction of training young Enrico in the intricacies of mathematics and physics. The war effort cost Italy dearly, although not as much as other European combatants: between 460,000 and 610,000 men were lost, fewer than for England, France, or Germany, but an enormous loss nevertheless. Fortunately, the war did not directly affect the Fermi family, but it was a major concern for them. And it did have a direct effect on the intake of students at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, where Fermi landed in the fall of 1918, just as the war was ending. Nine of his twelve classmates were admitted in 1915 but were deferred for military service until the war ended.

That said, Enrico’s distance, both psychologically and physically, from the travails of the war is notable. It seems not to have affected him at all. Perhaps the loss of his brother was enough. Perhaps compared to Giulio’s tragic and untimely death, the impersonal statistics of Italian war dead simply did not register. We know that Fermi threw himself into his friendship with Persico and his studies with Amidei with an energy and passion that bespeaks a gritty determination to overcome that loss, a far greater personal loss than anything the war raging around him could deliver.

BY THE FINAL YEAR OF LICEO, AMIDEI HAD WORKED WITH ENRICO for almost four years and understandably took a proprietary interest in the young prodigy’s future. In Amidei’s view, that future lay in one direction: Pisa’s Scuola Normale Superiore.

The school was founded by Napoleon in 1810 as an Italian equivalent to the École normale supérieure in Paris. By 1918 it was the most prestigious institution of higher education in Italy. Only a dozen or so students were admitted every year, half of whom would focus on the humanities, half on the sciences. In Fermi’s year it was even more competitive than in previous years, given the deferrals granted because of the war. The competition for the three open spots was intense.

The University of Rome was another obvious option, but Amidei’s advice to Alberto and Ida was to send Enrico to Pisa. The Scuola Normale had produced towering figures in mathematics and the humanities, and its mathematics faculty was world class. That there were no notable physicists (except perhaps for Vito Volterra, more of a mathematician than a physicist) among its graduates was more a commentary on the state of Italian physics at the time than on the school. Indeed, physics students would be expected to take a parallel set of courses in physics at the University of Pisa, just a short walk away.

Fermi’s parents objected. They were proud of Enrico and wanted the best for him, but they also wanted him to remain at home. In an age before widespread access to telephones, sending Enrico off some two hundred miles north would mean that they would have no contact with him except for the occasional letter. The devastating loss of Giulio made Enrico’s parents, especially Ida, doubly reluctant to part with their son. The University of Rome was strong and the physics department was close enough to walk to, in an area just to the west of the grand Santa Maria Maggiore church on the Esquiline Hill, on a street called Via Panisperna. A famous physicist, Orso Mario Corbino, had just taken over the physics department, with the intention of making it an elite center for teaching and research. He was also a rising figure in the Italian government, having been named chairman of the Public Works Council (he would soon become a member of the senate, too). Why couldn’t Enrico study with him? That Amidei succeeded in persuading them to allow Enrico to apply to the Scuola Normale and, once accepted, to attend is a testament to Amidei’s persistence and commitment to Enrico’s advancement. It is also clear that Enrico wanted to go, even though doing so would separate him from his parents and from Persico, who had decided to attend the University of Rome.

The entrance exam paper Fermi submitted for physics remains legendary to this day. The subject was a close analysis of the vibrations of a rod fixed at one end. He brought to bear all that he had learned from Poisson and Chwolson about harmonic waves and their behavior, and the analysis he presented demonstrated a graduate level of sophistication. The examiners were more than impressed. They may have suspected fraud and in any case wanted to meet the youngster who submitted the essay. The examiner, a professor of geometry at the University of Rome named Giuseppe Pittarelli, called Enrico in for an interview, something that rarely if ever occurred. In the course of the interview, the young prodigy satisfied Pittarelli that the work was his own. Pittarelli considered the exam to be at the level of a doctoral thesis and told him so. He also told Fermi that he was destined to become an important scientist. Fermi placed first among those who took the exam and was admitted without reservation. He would, in time, become the fabled institution’s most famous graduate.

With trepidation and heavy hearts, Alberto and Ida bade farewell to Enrico in October 1918. He was off to Pisa, where the next phase of his life as a physicist would begin.