Talk:Enrico Fermi

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Contents 1 Removed text 2 The First Nuclear Reactor was at The University of Chicago 3 Another Misleading Infobox 4 Removed image 5 John Pasta? 6 Fermi's Nobel prize

[edit] Removed text

I removed:

Fermi was an extremely practical physicist. His ability and success stemmed as much from his appraisal of the art of the possible, as from his innate skill and intelligence. He disliked complicated theories, and while he had great mathematical ability, he would never use it when the job could be done much more simply. He was famous for getting quick and accurate answers to problems which would stump other people. The best instance of this was seen during the first atomic bomb test in New Mexico on July 16, 1945. As the first sounds of the blast reached his ears, Fermi got up and threw up bits of paper in the air. By measuring the distance at which they landed, he could immediately calculate how many tons of TNT the test was equivalent to. It was characteristic of him, that when the detailed results from the complicated instruments came in a few days later, they agreed very well with his estimation. It is a measure of the man's concentration that he managed to focus at a moment when even the most hardened men's souls were stirred from the enormity of the spectacle they had witnessed.

Fermi's most disarming trait was his great modesty, and his ability to do any kind of work, whether creative or routine. It was this quality that made him popular and liked among people of all strata, from other Nobel Laureates to technicians. Henry DeWolf Smyth, who was Chairman of the Princeton Physics department, had once invited Fermi over to do some experiments with the Princeton cyclotron. Walking into the lab one day, Smyth saw the distinguished scientist helping a graduate student move a table, under another student's directions! Another time, a Du Pont executive made a visit to see him at Columbia. Not finding him either in his lab or his office, the executive was surprised to find the Nobel Laureate in the machine shop, cutting sheets of tin with a big pair of shears. Whatever the job was, for Fermi, it had to be done.

It isn't encyclopedic, neutral point of view, and is loaded with ridiculous peacock terms, and a lot of these stories (and their interpretations) sound very apocryphal. If someone wants to put in that he used bits of paper to make a very rough estimate of the blast force during the Trinity Test, and that he often did much physical labor himself, that's fine, but making it a case of Fermi being able to concentrate when "even the most hardened men's souls were stirred" and "whatever the job was, for Fermi, it had to be done" is just lame, I'm afraid. I like Fermi as much as the next guy but the entry should speak for itself. If you want to say that Fermi was smart and modest, find a quote from someone else saying it. The voice of the editor(s) should be detached and neutral. See Wikipedia:Avoid peacock terms. --Fastfission 00:36, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Glad you removed that " writing". Painful. (Not that I want to discourage anyone from participating in wikipedia; continue to contribute, we can fix it.) FYI the story with the paper is true, although I thought it was someone else; I'd have to look it up. The idea was when the blast wave (not "sound") hit where he stood, the distance horizontally a scrap would float is related to the energy release of blast.67.118.116.88 05:14, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Fermi was regarded as the only physicist of the twentieth century who truly excelled both theorectically and experimentally.

This opinion really needs some sort of attribution to be meaningful; I very much doubt there's enough agreement on something as subjective as "truly excelled both theoretically and experimentally" for this to be presented as a general consensus. In the meantime, I've nerfed back to "one of the few", since that better acknowledges the subjectivity of this judgement. --Calair 22:37, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It's just one of the many exaggerated phrases in this article. I've started to clean up some of this text but I realized that as it was I'd need to get a few book references first, as the current entry has more about Fermi's little brother than it does about his work in Rome on fission, much less the fact that he fled Italy because of the anti-Jewish laws, so a simple cleanup won't really do much. Sigh. --Fastfission 23:45, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Ok guys, before you make any more reverts, let me give you a few references. Why don't you take a look at them and then come back? 1. Enrico Fermi- Hummel (Forgot the first name) 2. Atoms in the family- Laura Fermi 3. Enrico Fermi: Physicist- Emilio Segre 4. The Physicists- C. P. Snow 5. Enrico Fermi-Audio biography on the Fermilab webpage, University of Chicago. Since there WERE a few physicists who did both theoretical work and experimental work, that is precisely the reason I used the phrase 'truly excelled'. Find me one example of a twentieth century physicist who did theoretical and experimental work, both of the calibre which Fermi did. An exaggeration ceases to be an exaggeration if it is supported by fact, common consensus, and by the work of scholarship.------Ashujo, 8 Feb 2005

There were an entire host of physicists in the 20th century who "truly excelled both theoretically and experimentally." Posting names of Fermi biographies hardly proves that there were none others than Fermi. Why don't you post a page number in any of those books which says that Fermi was the only physicist who did so? Come on, I dare you. Let's see it. Let's see the "common consensus" by historians and scholars. Real scholars know better than to make absolute statements. Let's see a quote. Let's change it on the page to, "According to the well-respected historian X, 'Fermi is etc.'" You get us the quote, and we'll do that, and everybody's purposes will be solved: you'll get your little props for Fermi, we'll get our encyclopedic entry.

A proposal: Instead of quibbling over your little POV hagiographic terms, why don't you make yourself useful—if you're so well-read on Fermi—by writing a better entry on him? The current one is short, has nothing about his experiments in the late 1930s which lead to fission, has nothing about the scientific and political context in which he worked, barely anything on his pile at Chicago, barely anything about his other work for the Manhattan Project, and has nothing but cheeky anecdotes about his life and work from 1945 until his death. Then work over the sentences until they flow like a nice narrative, the sort of thing you'd see in a professional publication. You'll make yourself a thousand times more useful to this project if you'd contributed half as much text to articles as you've posted in little rants on Talk and User pages about how your favorite "fun fact" was removed from an article by an editor. You claim to know it all but you don't really contribute all that much in terms of substance. --Fastfission 03:08, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Sure. You should give me some time for that though, because I wouldn't want to make the article sound trivial. And FYI, there are many things in the article which I have NOT posted. And I definitely will give you a reference. On your part, why don't you give me the names of five twentieth century physicists, among the 'host of physicists' that you know, who excelled in theory and experiment to the same calibre that Fermi did? And by the way, with due respect, reflect back on some of the statements you have made and you will understand that one can make a good case for YOU appearing as the head of the 'know it all' bandwagon. For a start, listen to the Fermi audio biography on the University of Chicago's website at http://www-news.uchicago.edu/fermi/resources.html. It is clearly mentioned that he was the ONLY physicist of the twentieth century to excel in both theory and experiment. Of course, you can argue about the authenticity of the source, but then so can I about yours. That is pointless. I will be back with more references. And I am still not sure you understand that what I am saying is NOT a hagiographical POV. An example; if someone makes the statement, "Einstein was the most famous physicist of the twentieth century", it's hardly a hagiographical biased POV------Ashujo 9 Feb, 2005

But "the only" is a much stronger and more subjective claim than "the best". If somebody claimed "Einstein was the only truly famous physicist of the twentieth century", that assuredly would be hagiography.

You've claimed Fermi was the only physicist to truly excel in theory and experiment; now, as disproof, you're asking for *five* physicists who were as good, which is an excessive requirement. Disproof only takes one, and that one doesn't have to be as good as Fermi - only good enough for a good number of people to describe them as 'excelling'. And since 'excellence' can't be measured, and the stringency of the word varies greatly from one use to another, that's an easy requirement to meet; most of the physicists who've won Nobel Prizes will qualify in many physicists' eyes.

So we have to throw in 'truly', used to mean 'by some unspecified standard that would make the rest of this sentence less subjective if revealed'. The result is as meaningful as saying "Javier Sotomayor is the only man who can truly jump a high-jump bar".

If you want to quote the UC's biography, go ahead, but attribute it to them. That way, people can see the context of the quote and judge potential biases for themselves. --Calair 21:24, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

See, I can construct a statement about Einstein using "the only" and it need not necessarily be hagiography. For example, "Einstein was perhaps the only physicist of the twentieth century who attained the highest pinnacle of being a scientist-celebrity".

To me, that still seems like hagiography. Einstein was certainly not the only scientist-celebrity - Richard Feynman also achieved that status. Both were successful scientists; both became celebrities even to people who didn't understand the science. Einstein may have been *more* of a celebrity than Feynman, but he wasn't unique in his status as a scientist-celebrity, just the most successful at it. Creating an artificial "highest pinnacle" to make Einstein unique is hagiographic, because it doesn't help to educate the reader; the only thing that does is to make it sound as if this status was unique, which it isn't. "Of all 20th-century physicists, Einstein was the greatest celebrity" imparts just as much information, without creating an imaginary category just to make him sound unique. (Admittedly, anything like "greatest celebrity" is a subjective judgement, but in this particular case I don't think it's likely to provoke argument.) --Calair 00:30, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Anyway, what you have said in the last line is EXACTLY what I have been saying for so long and I totally agree with you on that. Let us attribute specific statements to specific sources. Then let people decide how much to trust those statements. There is nothing wrong in quoting a seemingly superlative statement, provided that its source is more or less authoritative and can be precisely acertained. Then, let the people decide how much to get carried away by it. If they want to convert the scientist into a saint, it's their problem, not ours. And let me ask you to sincerely make a personal judgement. Consider the following discoveries of Fermi: theory of beta decay, Fermi-Dirac statistics, the discovery of slow neutrons, and the first self-sustained nuclear chain reaction (among others). In all honesty, in its scope and importance, I don't think that such a combination has been paralleled by anyone in the twentieth century. I cannot even think of ONE physicist. Anyway, I will definitely attribute the quotes and statements (maybe we can add 'perhaps' to it).--Ashujo, 9 Feb 2005.

As a personal judgement, I think it's a very impressive list; while I'm not sure I could rank it above Einstein's work on relativity, I'm not going to tell somebody else they're wrong for doing so. (And if I really had to answer for that judgement, I'd want to read up more on Fermi's work than I have done.) But if I can look at those achievements, and make that personal judgement, so can anybody else who reads this article. The facts speak for themselves. --Calair 00:30, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Come on, you cited five books as a response to being doubted that you had a real source for it. Give some page numbers! Surely you can do better at convincing me that this isn't an act of hagiography than a press piece audiobook called To Fermi With Love. I have to say, it feels to me like you're just throwing out titles to stifle discussion. I'm fine with a "perhaps." I'd be happier with an attributable quote. But if you're going to insist on "widely regarded" and "the only" then I'm going to have to ask you to come out with the references. After all, if the sentiment is so common, it shouldn't be a problem, right? And I eagerly await your efforts on making this a decent encyclopedia entry. --Fastfission 21:52, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

OK. You have to give me some time, as I hope you can understand that we are all busy in real life. I WILL give some page numbers, you can bank on it. I trust the UC audio biography by the way. It's not just a press piece audiobook, as it also contains testimonies from scores of well-known scientists. But anyway, I appreciate the fact that solid book references are more authoritative. Looking forward to making this a good entry (and hoping that deletion will not be an excessively delightful pastime for all of us)- Ashujo, 9 Feb 2005.

OK! I got a reference for 'the only'. See C. P. Snow's 'The Physicists', p.79. More to come soon.-Ashujo Feb 14, 2005

[edit] The First Nuclear Reactor was at The University of Chicago

The article gives the impression that the first nuclear reactor was built at Columbia. This is untrue. It was built in the squash courts under the bleachers of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago. Further, the article gives the impression that most of Fermi's work in the United States was at Columbia. I do not know what proportion of his time was spent at each university, but it is certainly the case that he was deeply involved with the physics department at the University of Chicago. I will defer to somebody who knows more completely the details of Fermi's life, but as it stands now the article is misleading at best. Peter 05:42, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Fermi designed and built the nuclear pile at Columbia but, before it was integrated with other equipment and tested, the government moved the Manhattan Project to Chicago. The apparatus was assembled and run for the first time under the Stagg Field bleachers.

Prof. Fermi was on the Columbia faculty from 1939 to 1945 (he also was a visiting prof. a few years earlier), and then taught at Chicago until shortly before his death in 1954. He thus spent more time at Chicago. He also must have spent considerable time developing the bomb at Chicago before formally moving there, but I don't know whether he divided his time between the two universities or if he was on leave from Columbia. I am not qualified to assess the relative importance of the work he did at each university.

[edit] Another Misleading Infobox

The present article on Fermi has another misleading infobox. He was Italian; he spent most of his life in Italy; his Nobel Prize was for work done in Italy. But for some inexplicable reason the present infobox features two US flags and only one Italian flag. It's not the first weird infobox I found - the one of Einstein used to be even worse! Is somebody systematically spin-doctoring infoboxes of immigrant scientists? I'll try to correct this. Physicists 20:12, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removed image

Image:EnricoFermistamp.jpg I removed this image and reverted the original. As it was, it was very jarring to have two images in the head of an article and very non-Wikipedia looking. I don't really care which image is used by they are similar enough than having both is just nonsensical. I don't think it's worth an article looking very odd to point out that the chalkboard error is on the postage stamp (they're obviously from the same photo session, so I don't find it that amazing. It is not an error that most people would know or care about.). --Fastfission 17:16, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

On second thought, I switched this one in for the other one. It's bigger, has some color. I don't find the "wrong equation" all that exciting, which was all the other one (Image:Enrico_Fermi.png) really had going for it, and it's a fairly washed out image. --Fastfission 23:47, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] John Pasta?

Didn't he do extensive work with John Pasta on the computing of the nuclear reactor? Ulam got a mention, but I can't find anything about John Pasta around here.

[edit] Fermi's Nobel prize

I am taking out the latest added paragraph, which makes it sound as if Fermi's prize-winning discoveries were not validated. I think the contributor is mistaking Fermi's production of new radioactive isotopes (a true fact) with his alleged production of a transuranic element, a discovery which he himself denied, but which was unfortunately leaked by Prof. Corbino. Later, the statement about the discovery was retracted (In her book, Fermi's wife recounts how extremely disturbed Fermi was by this false announcement). By bombarding elements with neutrons, Fermi did produce 'new radioactive elements', but not transuranic ones. The link which you have provided also makes it clear that he was in error regarding transuranic elements. We have already said in the article that he missed discovering nuclear fission. The main point is that the prize citation does not say anything about transuranic elements, and so as it stands, is true.--Ashujo, February 11, 2007, 11.36 a.m.