Ugo Fano
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| Ugo Fano | |
|---|---|
| Born | July 28, 1912 Turin, Italy |
| Died | February 13, 2001 Chicago, Illinois |
Ugo Fano (July 28, 1912, Turin, Italy – February 13, 2001, Chicago, Illinois) was a leader in theoretical physics in the 20th century.
His father was Gino Fano, a prominent mathematician, and his brother, Robert Fano is an eminent professor emeritus of electrical engineering at MIT. Fano's wife, Lilla Fano, a teacher, co-authored a well-known book with him on atomic and molecular physics, (U. Fano and L. Fano, Physics of Atoms and Molecules (University of Chicago Press, New York, 1959)). Appendix III of this book presents an elementary description of the collision of two charged particles, which was used by Richard Feynman in lectures that have been published as Feynman's Lost Lecture: Motion of Planets Around the Sun. An expanded version of this book was subsequently published by the University of Chicago Press: U. Fano and L. Fano, Basic Physics of Atoms and Molecules (University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1972)). Fano's cousin, Giulio Racah, made great contributions to the quantum theory of angular momentum (well-known as Racah algebra), and wrote a concise monograph with Fano on the subject: U. Fano and G. Racah, Irreducible Tensorial Sets (Academic Press, New York, 1959).
Ugo Fano had a major impact in sustained work over six decades on atomic physics and molecular physics, and earlier on radiological physics. Most areas of current research in these subjects reflect his fundamental contributions. Such phenomena as the Fano resonance profile, the Fano factor, the Fano effect, and the Fano–Lichten mechanism bear his name.
Ugo Fano earned his doctorate in mathematics at the University of Turin in 1934 and did work with Enrico Fermi in Rome, where he was a senior member of 'I ragazzi di Via Panisperna'. It was during this period that with the urging of Fermi, Fano developed his seminal theory of resonant configuration interaction (Fano resonance profile), which led to two papers (U. Fano, Nuovo Cimento 12, 154 (1935) (English translation), and U. Fano, Phys. Rev., 124, 1866(1961)). This latter publication is one of the most cited articles published in The Physical Review.
Fano spent 1936–37 with Werner Heisenberg in Leipzig and immigrated to the United States in 1939. His initial work in the U.S. was on bacteriophages and pioneering work in the study of radiological physics, specifically, the differences in the biological effects of X-rays and neutrons. After serving a stint at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds during World War II, he joined the staff of the National Bureau of Standards (NBS - now the National Institute of Standards and Technology), where he was hired as the first theoretical physicist on the NBS staff. He served there until 1966, when he joined the faculty of physics at the University of Chicago. There he trained, until the early 1990s, a large body of graduate students and postdoctoral research associates who now occupy leading positions in theoretical atomic and molecular physics in the United States, Europe, and Japan.
Ugo Fano was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society and the Royal Society of London. He was awarded the Enrico Fermi Award of the U.S. Department of Energy in 1995. His most-cited work is the 1961 paper mentioned above.
