Emilio Segrè

Emilio Segrè, born on February first, nineteen oh five, in Tivoli, near Rome, was a prominent Italian-American physicist and radiochemist. He began his academic journey studying engineering at the University of Rome La Sapienza, transitioning to physics in nineteen twenty-seven. By nineteen thirty-two, he had become an assistant professor of physics at the University of Rome, where he was part of the renowned group known as the Via Panisperna boys.

Segrè's career took a significant turn when he became the director of the Physics Laboratory at the University of Palermo from nineteen thirty-six to nineteen thirty-eight. His visit to Ernest O. Lawrence's Berkeley Radiation Laboratory in nineteen thirty-seven proved pivotal, as he received a molybdenum strip from the laboratory's cyclotron accelerator, which exhibited unusual radioactivity. Through meticulous chemical and theoretical analysis, he identified this radiation as emanating from technetium, marking it as the first artificially synthesized element not found in nature.

In nineteen thirty-eight, while at Berkeley, Segrè faced the challenges posed by Benito Mussolini's antisemitic laws, which barred Jews from academic positions. As a result, he became an indefinite émigré. Despite the difficulties, he was offered a position as a research assistant at the Berkeley Radiation Lab, where he contributed to the discovery of astatine and the isotope plutonium-239, the latter being integral to the Fat Man nuclear bomb used in Nagasaki.

From nineteen forty-three to nineteen forty-six, Segrè played a crucial role as a group leader in the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He discovered that the proposed plutonium gun-type nuclear weapon, Thin Man, would not function due to plutonium-240 impurities. In nineteen forty-four, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States, returning to Berkeley in nineteen forty-six as a professor of physics and history of science, a position he held until nineteen seventy-two.

Segrè's contributions to science were recognized when he and Owen Chamberlain were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in nineteen fifty-nine for their discovery of the antiproton. Beyond his scientific achievements, he was also an avid photographer, capturing significant moments in the history of modern science. His photographic collection was later donated to the American Institute of Physics, which honored him by naming its photographic archive after him.