Grand Schools of Physics

Series Consultant: Dr P Kennedy

The Fermi school in the

United States
Albert Wattenberg
Physics Department, University o f Illinois. Urbana, Illinois. USA

I . Introduction
Enrico Fermi made extraordinary contributions to
physics.
but
perhaps
equallyimportant is his
influence on physicists. This article attempts to give
some insight into his influence. especially during the
period that he was in the United States. In his book
on Fermi and in the previous article in this journal.
Emilio Segre (1970. 1988) covers the earlier Italian
period.
Fermi \vas a tremendously energetic and effective
physicist. During the last ten years of his life. Fermi
did experiments o r had students doing experiments
in neutron physics.
mesonphysics.
liquid-state
physic5and i n thedevelopment o f scintillation
counters. At the same time.his theoretical nark and
that o f his students was in nuclear physics. cosmic-
rayphysics,astrophysics.magnetoh!,drodynamics.
liquid instabilities and the use o f computers.
In thisarticle ##l.3 and 1 describeFermi a s ;I
teacher, a s anexperimentalist.and a s 21 colleague
and theorist. Section5 compares Fermi's school with
those o f other great physicists.
2. Fermi as a teacher
I \VLS ;I graduate student at Columbia University in
NewYorkCitywhenFermiarrived in 1939. I
registered for his quantum mechanics course. and in
subsequentyears.Fermi w a s my teacher in three
formal courses.
There was a clarity and logic in Fermi's presen-
tationthatmade his lecturesveryeasyto follow.
Fermi minimised proofs and topics that would divert
the How o f thought (Fermi 1Y61). He knew what \vas
important and what could be neglected, and his brief
plausibilityargumentswereverypersuasive.Since
he did not use textbooks students had to take notes
in Fermi's classes. I t w ~ difficult
s t o recollect a l l the
arguments from pure memory.
Flis homeworkassignmentswere o f an anal!tic
nature and frequently were applications to physics
problems that required numerical answer\. He put
effort into preparing notebooks f o r his lectureh, but
hedidnotbringthem t o class.Yang'sdescription
(Yang 1965) o f his experienceswithFermi is an
example.
'As is well known.Fermi g a ~ eextremelylucid
lectureb. I n a fashion that is characteristic of him. f o r
eachtopichealwaysstartedfromthebeginning.
treatedsimpleexamplesandavoided a s much 21s
possible "formalisms". ( H e used t o joke that coni-
plicated formalism was for the '.high priests.") The
\ e r > simplicity of his reasoning conveyed the
impression o f effortlessness. But this impression is
Fcwpli i r l thr L'SA
false: the simplicity was the result of careful prep-
aration and o f deliberate weighing of different alter-
natives of presentation. In the spring of 1949 when
Fermi was giving a course on nuclear physics (which
waslaterwritten up by Orear.Rosenfeldand
Schluterandpublished as abook).hehad to be
away from Chicago for a few days. He asked me to
takeoverforonelectureandgavemeasmall
notebook in which he had carefully prepared each
lecture in great detail. He went over the lecture with
me before going
away.
explainingthereasons
behind each particular line of presentation.'
*ItwasFermi'shabittogive,once or twicea
week. informal unprepared lectures to a small group
o f graduatestudents.Thegroupgathered in his
oftice and someone. either Fermi himself o r one of
thestudents.wouldproposeaspecifictopicfor
discussion. Fermi would search through his carefully
indexed notebooks to tindhis notes on the topic and
would then present it to us . . . '
Aglimpse of Fermias a teacher in 1954 at
Vnrenna is given by Feld (1965).
'. . . Here was Fermi at the height of hi5 powers.
bringing order and simplicity out of confusion. find-
ing connections between seemingly unrelated phe-
nomena: wit and wisdom emerging from lips white.
a s usual from contact with chalk . . .'
Fermididnotseparateresearchandteaching.
During the war. Fermi still gave courses because he
felttheyoungstaffmembersshouldhaveaclear
understanding of whattheyweredoing.The first
lectures were in Chicago; Inter in the war, lectures
weregivenat Los Alamos(theselaterlectures
became the basis for textbooks for training nuclear
engineers). The Chicago lectures were prior to the
tirst successful release of atomic energy in a chain
reaction. He
wanted us all to understand the
sequence of measurements which he was going to
use to establishthatanuclearchainreactionwas
being controlled quantitatively (Wattenberg 1975).
At Columbia Fermi had only two graduate stu-
dents. one of whom was H L Anderson (Anderson
1975) whocontinued to workwithFermiatthe
University of Chicago during and after the war. The
war project to develop a nuclearchainreaction
became centred in Chicago. and at various times in
the Spring of 1942 Fermi's group moved there. In
April1942.BernieFeld.EnricoFermiand I left
NewYorkandstartedlivingattheInternational
House of theUniversity of Chicago.Fermiwas
there because Laura and the children were still in
New York. We frequently ate dinner and spent the
evening together. Fermi could beat me at chess and
at tennis, but I beat him at ping pong. He enjoyed
swimming and skiing with students and colleagues
(Libby 197Y). Therewas a continuousgame of
student-teacher relationships when some of us were
with him (Wattenberg 1982). If we saw something.
he would ask us to explain quantitatively what was
happening. For example. the fire in a fireplace led
89
to hisasking us to try to calculate the amount of
vacuumabovethetire.Uponseeing a dirtywin-
dow,heasked us howthickcanthedirt on a
windowpane get? To play the game one only had to
know the fundamental constants of nature and have
someidea as to howthingsmightvarywithone
another or the appropriate differential equations. If
we made a poor start, he would help us by asking us
to go to some extreme condition where the answer
wasobviouslyridiculous.Hewasveryquick in
thinking up such tests. tests he used when he made
his own formulations of problems. He gave us the
wonderfulfeelingthatwe also couldandshould
know all physics.
At the University of Chicago after the war. there
was a group of outstanding students. three of whom
have since won Nobel Prizes: Owen Chamberlain.
T D Lee,andC N Yang.Hisstudentssawhim
frequently: he would visit us in the laboratory. o r we
would see him at lunch or we could go to his office.
Attheluncheontable.wewouldsometimesbe
joined by studentswhowereworking for other
professors.Therewasagreatdeal of openness
about discussing the problems we were encountering
and the results of calculations or measurements. It
was a friendly, jocular. stimulating atmosphere and
we were made aware of a broad spectrum of physics
problems by these interchanges at lunch.
He encouraged a great deal of independence in
thestudentswhoweredoingtheirtheses.The
experimental students who performed these at the
Argonne National Laboratory were Chamberlain. R
Garwin and I . I n Chicago, J Steinberger used cosmic
rays
to
study
muondecays.
After
Anderson.
Marshall.andNaglebuiltandbroughtintoope-
rationthesynchro-cyclotronatChicago.Fermi's
experimentalstudentsmeasuredrr-mesonscatter-
ing. The students included J Orear. A H Rosenfeld.
R A Schluter and G B Yodh.
3. Fermi as an experimentalist
In America. Fermi's
experimentalcontributions
weremainly in neutronphysicsandpionphysics.
The nuclear reactor certainly was Fermi's baby and
was his greatest experimental contribution. Nuclear
reactors
have been
fabulous
researchtools for
nuclearphysicists,solid-statephysicists,chemists.
biologists.andthose in nuclearmedicine(Sachs
1981). Anothermajorexperimentalcontribution
resulted from studying pion scattering. He and his
colleagues discovered the isotopic (excited) statesof
protons and neutrons (baryons).
Fermi was an excellent and very careful experi-
mentalist. There was almost a ritual involved in the
way Fermi took measurements during experiments
(Wattenberg 1982). A good example is the ritual we
followed in usingGeigercounters to measure the
radioactivity induced in various substances by neu-
trons. We first measured what the Geiger counters
YO A WlIttenherg

read without any sources in order to establish the tered ;I fascinating demonstration of the wave-
background. Next we put ;I standard (radioactive) particle duality of quantum mechanics. In the course
source on the Geiger tube. and then we would run of checking measurements. an extra block of gra-
the sample we were trying to measure. After phite was put above a so called thermal neutron
measuring the sample we would measure the back- column. I t was discovered that a fraction of the
ground again. If the measurement of the standard neutrons were going through this graphite without
fluctuated by more than three standard deviations, making collisions; specifically they were the neu-
we repeated the
standardbefore we used the trons withverylow velocities. effectively having a
counter. If it was not a statistical fluctuation. we temperature hundreds of degrees below room tem-
changed the Geiger counteror fixed the equipment. perature. In a few hours Fermi explained it to us.
When we were measuring neutron fluxes with The neutronsas well as acting like particles also
indium or rhodium foils. we would irradiate the foil acted like waves. The neutrons with very low veloci-
for precisely fixed amounts of time. and we tried to ties had wavelengths longer than the lattice spacing
make the foils identical in size and thickness. While and therefore a l l of the coherent scattering came out
one was irradiating a foil, one would also do the at zero degrees. The neutrons were transmitted as
calculations from the last measurement-correcting waves in the graphite. but in our counters they were
first forthe background and then for the decay particles causing nuclear reactions. Fermi inter-
during the lifetime of the radioactivity. Fermi would twined theory and experiment so easily.
check thedata whenever he came in. He also Later on, after Walter Zinn had built the first
encouraged many of us to do an independent. com- heavy-water high-flux reactor, Fermi and Zinn per-
plete analysis of the data and to compare it with formed the beautiful pioneeringneutron optics
what we had expectedtheoretically. Fermi really experiments. Zinn did the Bragg scattering of neu-
liked the equipment, and he gave names to the trons by crystals, establishing the feasibility of crys-
detectors. At one point our Geiger counters were tallographic neutron spectrometers. Fermi and Zinn
named after the characters in the children’s story. together did a series of experiments with neutron
Winnie-(he-Pooh.Their names were ‘Woozle’. ‘Pig- mirrors. They showed that for many substances the
let’, ‘Heffalump’ etc, and we would talk about their index of refraction for very slowneutrons is less than
being sick when they did not work correctly. unity. Therefore onegets total reflection of neutrons
He liked to calculate in advance (sometimes while going from air to the mirror substance interface if
sitting in bed early in the morning)the results the surface is reasonably polished-namely if Fermi
expected from a measurement during thatparticular could see the reflection of his eyelashes.
day. If it was not the anticipated value, or if some
other phenomenon showed up. he would make sure
that it was not a fluctuation and then he would stop Enrico Fermi
the measurement. We would sit and talk about what
might be the possible sources of the discrepancies.
The first questions were always. ‘Was it instrumen-
tal? Are the countersall acting like they should?‘ He
frequently tried to do things with redundant detec-
tion systems. Other questions were ‘Is there a spuri-
ous background? Did we omit a temperatureor
other effect in the calculations we were performing?’
We would then discuss which were the simplest
things to check first and which were the more likely
things. We would do quick checks first, and then
proceed to the ones that took longer. even if they
were more likely. An example of this is the measure-
ments he made with Leona Marshall and myself on
the neutron-electron interaction. My recollection
is that within two four-hour periods, we had
minimised all of the spurious effects such as differ-
ent detectorefficiencies and scattering from neutron
collimators. The next day. we were able to spend the
entire day collecting statistically significant data.
Along the way. we must have done seven other
subsidiary experiments studying the instrumen-
tation. the geometry and theuniformity of the beam
(Fermi and Marshall 1047).
During the war, with the rebuilt graphite reactor
at the Argonne National Laboratory, we encoun-
 F(~rt77iit7 tl7r USA 91

Most of his life, as far as I know, he kept rather ratherlengthybuttheyprovideveryinteresting

regular hours, leaving home at about 7:30 and leav- insights (Chandrasekhar 1965).
ing work at 5:OO or 6:OO. However. wJhen we were Fermiwasveryavailableto his colleaguesand
livingtogetheratthedormitories of the Argonne students for discussions. The outstanding example
Laboratory,wefoundoutthathewasgettingup of the value of talking to Fermi is in the Nobel Prize
very early in the morning and doing theoretical or winningpaper of MariaGoeppertMayer (1Y49)
numericalcalculations.writingthem in his little whereshethanksFermifortheidea o f the L-S
book. before he went to breakfast. With the advent coupling that explains the shell model in nuclei.
o f the cyclotron at Chicago his schedule changed. Fermi loved to organise seminars. Whilst driving
accordingtoLaura,hiswife(Fermi1954):'He out to the ArgonneLaboratorytogether.
he
played with the cyclotron at all hours of the day and arranged for a weekly theoretical seminar to be held
evening during the summer of 1951. He allowed the there. Experimentalists also were invited. and Fermi
cyclotron to upset his routine.' One piece of appara- expected us t o give talks on theoretical topics. The
tus o f which he was very proud was a trolley that he most special seminar (which has continued for over
built t o runinsidethecyclotron(Anderson 1965). thirty years) in which Fermi played a major role WIS
Obviously Fermi enjoyed building and using equip- the Thursday seminar at the Institute for Nuclear
ment.thetoys of physicists.Thosewhowere Studies. It was informal and originally one was not
working with him shared in the fun of performing supposedtohavepreparedatalk.JoeMayeror
experiments. GregorWentzelwouldchoosesomebodyandask
themtosaywhattheyhadbeendoingrecently.
There was a mixo f chemists and physicists and some
4. Fermi as a colleague and theorist very significant exchanges of information occurred.
Fermiplayedanexceedinglyimportantrole in During the period in Chicago. Fermi wrote some
makingtheUniversity of Chicagoanevenmore pioneering theoretical papers by himself; one waso n
outstandingschoolafterWorldWar 11. In 1944. theorigin of cosmic rays and another was o n the
toward the end of the war. Arthur Compton offered statisticaltheory of high-energynucleoninterac-
Fermi a permanent professorship at the University tions. His PhD students during this period worked
o f Chicago. I n lY45, Fermi gave President Hutchins on separatetopics.Thetheoreticalstudentswho
a suggested list of newappointments to boththe workedwith
Fermiincluded G Chew. M L
physics and chemistry departments. Hutchins used Goldberger. Haber-Schaim.
U T Lee.
DL
Fermi's list to successfullyrecruitmost of them. WolfensteinandC N Yang.Haber-Schaimhas
These people also became members of the Institute devotedhimselftotheteaching o f physics.The
for Nuclear Studies that was founded at the end of othersare a l l famoustheoreticalphysicists.Their
the w a r : thenamehassincebeenchanged to the publications have included basic theoretical contri-
Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago. butionsand.alongthelines o f theirtraining by
During the years 1946 to lY54, the people at the Fermi.theoreticalexplanations o f physicalobser-
University o f Chicagowhowere or havebecome vations.
Nobel Laureates
included 0 Chamberlain. S
Chandrasekhar.JCronin. E Fermi. J Franck.M
Gell-Mann. Libby, TFMLee.
WD
Goeppert-Mayer. R S Mulliken. H C Urey and C N 5. Perspective
Yang. Onemaygainabetterperspective on theFermi
In contrast to earlier years. after the war many of school by comparisons with other great schools of
Fermi's theoretical
paperswere
collaborations. physics.Twoschools
that
have
similarities
to
Amongst his coauthorswere S Chandrasekhar. N Fermi's
Sommerfeld's
are Munich
atand
Metropolis. J Pasta. R G Sachs. E Teller, S Ulam. J Heisenberg's at Leipzig. Following these there is a
von Neumann. V Weisskopf and C N Yang. Fermi discussion of schools that are different.
met with Chandrasekhar every Thursday morning If one compares schoolsof physics by the students
f o r several years to discuss and work o n astrophysi- visitors
and
the that
they
attracted.
then
calproblems.Thesemeetingsresultedinseveral Sommerfeld's school at Munich is probably the most
papers. one o n the magnetic fields in spiral a r m and outstanding one. The excellent teaching and warmth
another on the problem o f gravitational stability in of Sommerfeld in Munich certainly attracted many
the presence of a magnetic field. As Chandrasekhar people. Those who came to Munich include Bethe.
pointsout.theseweresomewhatuncharacteristic Bragg.Brillouin,Condon,Debye.Eckart.Ewald.
types of problemsforFermi to work on. being Heisenberg,Heitler.Herzfeld.Houston.LaPorte.
largely mathematical (e.g. the generalisation of the London. Morse,
Pauli.
Pauling.
Peierls.
Rabi.
virial theorem).Chandrasekharstatedthatmany Stueckelberg.TellerandWentzel.Animportant
o f thecomplexproblemswereFermi'sideasand similarity was the coordination with the experimen-
they were novel
at
the
time.The
remarks of talphysicsprogrammeheaded by Debyeandthe
Chandrasekhar concerning working with Fermi are experiments of Von Laue and Hertz. Sommerfeld
92 A Wuttcnherg

also taughtagreatdealinseminars;therewere The above comparisons are to European schools.

luncheon discussions with his students, and he took In the United States. Lawrence and Oppenheimer at
students on skiingtrips.Anothersimilarity is that Berkeleyattractedsomeveryoutstandingpeople.
lectures of Sommerfeld's were masterpieces of clear Lawrence was much more interested in engineering.
exposition,andhepresented a veryclearhonest and he did not set an example of doing physics or
discussionforthestudents.Howeverthereare being interested in theory. Oppenheimer's relation-
differences.Sommerfeldindicatedwherehewas ship with his students was one of domination and
ignorant and where he got into trouble; Fermi would many of them worshipped him. By comparison. the
not start a calculationin class unless he knew that he feeling students and colleagues had about Fermi was
could finish it. Two example of comments concern- that he was a kind and brilliant friend who would try
ing Sommerfeld follow. '. , . He used to emphasise to help you understand things.
theproblemsanddifficultiesratherthanexplain Throughout his entire career Fermi set an exam-
them away. He made you feel that science is some- ple of combiningtheoryandexperiment.Several
thing alive and that even as a beginner you can be a generations of experimentalphysicistshavebeen
usefulmember of thisorganism'(Wentzel 1949). strongly influenced by Fermi. It is a standard expec-
'No other twentieth-century theoretical physicist has tation now that experimentalists must have a good
produced a comparable school of important pupils understanding of theoretical physics.
Although
and exerted more influence on funding publications Fermi is undoubtedlypart of ahistoricaltrend
and other vital institutions of his own discipline . . . developing in the mid-twentieth century. he exem-
what distinguished him was his skill as a teacher and plified thevalue of combiningtheoryandexperi-
a promoter.Hissignificanceasapropagator of ment. The physicists whom Fermi influenced have
sciencefarexceeds his contributionstoscience' continued this legacy into the present generation.
(Eckert1987). What made Fermi special was not just that he was
Heisenberg. especially during the period that he abrilliantphysicistand a fabulous teacher. I t was
wasatLeipzig.hassimilaritiestoFermi in that that he was a wonderful person who made physics an
he was very informal with his students (Jungnickel excitingexperience.Therearemanytributesto
and McCormmach 1986. pp 367-8). There are excel- Fermi.One of thebest is thestatement by Sam
lent insights into Heisenberg in oral interviews with Allison ( 1 9 9 ) . 'Everyonewhohadmorethan 21
hisstudents(Bloch 1981. Peierls1977)andwith trivial acquaintance with Fermi recognised at once
his wife (Heisenberg 1984). I n Leipzig, beginning in that here was a man who possessed the most extra-
1927. Heisenberg attracted very many outstanding ordinary endowment of the highest human capabili-
youngphysicists.includingBloch.Peierls.Hund. ties. We may have seen his physical energy beforeor
Von Weizsacker,Teller,Rabi.LandauandMott. his basic balance, simplicity and lifestyle before or
Heisenbergwasveryinformalwithstudentsand evenpossibly his mentalbrilliance.butwho in his
visitors.
From
Bloch and
Peierls.
one
has
the lifetimehaseverseensuchqualitiescombined in
impression that Heisenberg ate lunch with the stu- one individual?'
dents.wentskiingwiththem.andalsoenjoyed
playingpingpongwiththem,especiallywhenhe
won. Heisenberg was very similar to Fermi in being
interested in many fields of physics. For a few years,
Acknowledgments
Debye was also at Leipzig; however there did not
The author appreciated ver) much the discuhsions and
seemtobemuchmixing of experimentalistsand insights provided by John Simpson and Victor
theorists.The
obvious difference fromFermi's Wcisskopf. 1 am grateful to the Center f o r the History 01
school is that Heisenberg did not play a major role Physic\ o f the American Institute o f Physics f o r loan5 o f
in training experimental physicists. the oral interview tape\ o f Bloch and Peierls from the
The Copenhagen School under Bohr was exceed- Archives f o r the History o f Quantum Mechanics. Some
ingly different in its preoccupation with questions of 0 1 m y impressions here influenced by private
philosophy and the meaning of quantum mechanics. con\ersationh with Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenherg.
Therewereendlessdiscussions of aphilosophical
naturewithBohr.Fermitrained us to understand
physicalphenomena ' quantitatively.Hecertainly
discussed and worried about principles. but it was
nothismajorpreoccupation.Whenhedeveloped References
his theory of /3 decay, the creation of particles was a Allison S 19.58 Biographicul Memoir.r o f t h e A'urimfu/
new principle. and it was a major concern to him Acudetny of Scie,7ce~40
(Cell-Mann 1982, p 225). Fermi's concern about the Anderson H L 1965 Enrico Fermi. Colleered Puper\ to1
11. e d . E Amaldi. H L Anderson. E Persico. E Segrc
number of fundamental constants in nature under- (Editor i n Chief) and A Wattenberg (Chicago:
lies the work done with Yang on the question of the University o f Chicago Press) p 82.5
number of elementary particles and whether mesons Anderson H L 197.5 A / / in Our Tim(. e d . J Wilson
can be constructed out of other particles. (Chicago: Bulletin o f the Atomic Scientists)

Bloch F 1981 Oral interview with L Hoddeson.
December. at Center for History of Physics
Chandrasekhar S 1965 Enrico Fermi, Collected Papers
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Seer? (Editor in Chief) and A Wattenberg (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press) pp 923-7
Eckert M 1987 Historictrl Studies in the Phy.sictrl Sciences
17 312-6
Feld B T 1965 Enrico Fermi, Collected Puper.s vol. 11. ed
E Amaldi. H L Anderson. E Persico. E Segre (Editor
In Chief) and A Wattenberg (Chicago: University o f
Chicago Press) p IO04
Fermi E 1961 Notes on Qlrtrntum Mechunics (Chicago:
The University o f Chicago Press)
Fermi E and Marshall L 1947 Phys. Reo. 72 113Y-46
Fermi L 1954 Atoms i n the Fumily. .My Life wrth Enrico
Fermi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press)
Gcll-Mnnn M I982 J . fhy.\iqrre Cull. 43 CX suppl. AU 12
pp 401-2
Heiscnherg E lY84 Inner Exile (Stuttgart: Birkhauser)
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Y3
Elnctein v o l . I1 (Chicago: Univcrsity o l Chicago Press)
pp 367-x
Libby L M IY7Y The Urcrnium People ( N e w York:
Scribner)
Mayer M G 1949 Phys. Reo. 75 1970
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B a p . May. in the Archives for the History of
Quantum Mechanics
Sachs R G ( e d . ) 1984 The Nucleur Chain Reuction Forty
Yeurs Later (Chicago: University of Chicago Press)
Segre E 1970 Enrico Fermi - Physicist (Chicago:
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- 1988 Ertr. J . Phys. 9
Wattenberg A 1975 All in O u r Time ed. J Wilson
(Chicago: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)
- 1982 The Brrlletrrr of rhe Atomic Scienti.sts 38
22-32
Wentzel G I949 A m . J Phys. 17 312-16
Ynng C N 1965 Enrico Fermi. Collected Paper.\ v o l . I I .
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(Editor i n Chief) and A Wattenberg (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press) p 673-4