^* When Cambridge physicists made the same error, it was quickly discovered. Their results failed to comport with those obtained by the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, who on December 2, 1942, engineered the world’s first controlled fission reaction in a makeshift laboratory set up in a doubles squash court under the University of Chicago’s Stagg Field. Fermi, furiously devoted to free speech, objected indignantly when his graphite work was classified in order to prevent the news from reaching Germany.