Emilio Segrè

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Emilio Segrè
Tivoli, Kingdom of Italy
Died22 April 1989(1989-04-22) (aged 84)
Lafayette, California, U.S.
CitizenshipItaly (1905–44)
United States (1944–89)
Alma materSapienza University of Rome
Known forDiscovery of antiproton, technetium, and astatine
AwardsNobel Prize in Physics (1959)
Scientific career
InstitutionsLos Alamos National Laboratory
University of California, Berkeley
University of Palermo
Sapienza University of Rome
Columbia University
Doctoral advisorEnrico Fermi
Doctoral studentsThomas Ypsilantis
Herbert York
Signature

Emilio Gino Segrè (Italian:

Nobel laureate, who discovered the elements technetium and astatine, and the antiproton, a subatomic antiparticle, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1959 along with Owen Chamberlain
.

Born in

radioactivity. Using careful chemical and theoretical analysis, Segrè was able to prove that some of the radiation was being produced by a previously unknown element, named technetium, the first artificially synthesized chemical element
that does not occur in nature.

In 1938,

naturalized citizen of the United States. On his return to Berkeley in 1946, he became a professor of physics and of history of science, serving until 1972. Segrè and Owen Chamberlain co-headed a research group at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory that discovered the antiproton, for which the two shared the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physics
.

Segrè was an active photographer who took many pictures documenting events and people in the history of modern science, which were donated to the American Institute of Physics after his death. The American Institute of Physics named its photographic archive of physics history in his honor.

Early life

Emilio Gino Segrè was born into a

University of Rome La Sapienza as an engineering student.[4]

In 1927, Segrè met

Robert Millikan, Wolfgang Pauli, Max Planck and Ernest Rutherford. Segrè then joined Fermi and Rasetti at their laboratory in Rome. With the help of the director of the Institute of Physics, Orso Mario Corbino, Segrè was able to transfer to physics,[6] and, studying under Fermi, earned his laurea degree in July 1928,[7] with a thesis on "Anomalous Dispersion and Magnetic Rotation".[4]

After a stint in the

Raman effect.[9]

In 1930, Segrè began studying the

nuclear spin of potassium was +1/2.[12]

Physics professor

Segrè was appointed assistant professor of physics at the University of Rome in 1932 and worked there until 1936, becoming one of the

Breslau when that part of Prussia became part of Poland after World War I. After the Nazi Party came to power in Germany in 1933, she had emigrated to Italy, where she worked as a secretary and an interpreter. At first she did not speak Italian well, and Segrè and Spiro conversed in German, in which he was fluent.[14] The two were married at the Great Synagogue of Rome on 2 February 1936. He agreed with the rabbi to spend the minimal amount on the wedding, giving the balance of what would be spent on a luxury wedding to Jewish refugees from Germany. The rabbi managed to give them many of the trappings of a luxury wedding anyway.[15] The couple had three children: Claudio, born in 1937, Amelia Gertrude Allegra, born in 1937, and Fausta Irene, born in 1945.[16]

The Via Panisperna boys in the courtyard of Rome University's Physics Institute in Via Panisperna. Left to right: Oscar D'Agostino, Segrè, Edoardo Amaldi, Franco Rasetti and Enrico Fermi.

After marrying, Segrè sought a stable job and became professor of physics and director of the Physics Institute at the

radioactivity. Segrè enlisted Perrier's help to subject the strip to careful chemical and theoretical analysis, and they were able to prove that some of the radiation was being produced by a previously unknown element.[18] In 1947 they named it technetium, as it was the first artificially synthesized chemical element.[19][20]

Radiation Laboratory

In June 1938, Segrè paid a summer visit to

Czechoslovakian crisis prompted Segrè to send for Elfriede and Claudio, as he now feared that war in Europe was inevitable.[22] In November 1938 and February 1939 they made quick trips to Mexico to exchange their tourist visas for immigration visa. Both Segrè and Elfriede held grave fears for the fate of their parents in Italy and Germany.[23]

At the Berkeley Radiation Lab, Lawrence offered Segrè a job as a research assistant—a relatively lowly position for someone who had discovered an element—for US$300 (equivalent to $6,600 in 2023) a month for six months. When Lawrence learned that Segrè was legally trapped in California, he took advantage of the situation to reduce Segrè's salary to $116 a month.

nuclear reactors.[30]

Segrè then turned his attention to another missing element on the

Arthur C. Wahl to create plutonium-239 in Lawrence's 60-inch (150 cm) cyclotron in December 1940.[34][35]

Manhattan Project

Segrè's ID badge photo from Los Alamos

The Japanese

Raymond T. Birge asked him to teach classes to the remaining students. This provided a useful supplement to Segrè's income, and he established important friendships and professional associations with some of these students, who included Owen Chamberlain and Clyde Wiegand.[36]

In late 1942, Oppenheimer asked Segrè to join the

Los Alamos Laboratory.[37] Segrè became the head of the laboratory's P-5 (Radioactivity) Group, which formed part of Robert Bacher's P (Experimental Physics) Division.[38] For security reasons, he was given the cover name of Earl Seaman.[39] He moved to Los Alamos with his family in June 1943.[40]

Segrè's group set up its equipment in a disused

cosmic rays, which were more prevalent at Los Alamos due to its high altitude.[41]

The group measured the activity of

gun-type nuclear weapon, would not work and implied that the project's investment in plutonium production facilities at the Hanford Site was wasted. Segrè's group carefully checked their results and concluded that the increased activity was due to the plutonium-240 isotope.[44]

In June 1944, Segrè was summoned into Oppenheimer's office and informed that while his father was safe, his mother had been rounded up by the Nazis in October 1943. Segrè never saw either of his parents again. His father died in Rome in October 1944.

Trinity nuclear test in July 1945.[47] The blast damaged or destroyed most of the experiments, but enough data was recovered to measure the gamma rays.[48]

Later life

In August 1945, a few days before the surrender of Japan and the end of World War II, Segrè received an offer from Washington University in St. Louis of an associate professorship with a salary of US$5,000 (equivalent to $84,600 in 2023). The following month, the University of Chicago also made him an offer. After some prompting, Birge offered $6,500 and a full professorship, which Segrè decided to accept. He left Los Alamos in January 1946 and returned to Berkeley.[49][50]

In the late 1940s, many academics left the University of California, lured away by higher-salary offers and by the university's peculiar

hydrogen bomb, a weapon that Segrè felt would be of dubious utility.[51]

Unhappy with his deteriorating relationships with his colleagues and with the poisonous political atmosphere at Berkeley caused by the loyalty oath controversy, Segrè accepted a job offer from the

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.[51] The courts ultimately resolved the patent claims in the Italian scientists' favour in 1953, awarding them US$400,000 (equivalent to $4,600,000 in 2023) for the patents related to generating neutrons, which worked out to about $20,000 after legal costs. Kennedy, Seaborg, Wahl and Segrè were subsequently awarded the same amount for their discovery of plutonium, which came to $100,000 after being divided four ways, there being no legal fees this time.[52]

After turning down offers from

Carl D. Anderson in 1932.[58] By analogy, it was now expected that there would be an antiparticle corresponding to the proton, but no one had found one, and even in 1955 some scientists doubted that it existed.[59] Using Lawrence's Bevatron set to 6 GeV, they managed to detect conclusive evidence of antiprotons.[56][60] Chamberlain and Segrè were awarded the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery.[61] This was controversial, because Clyde Wiegand and Thomas Ypsilantis were co-authors of the same article, but did not share the prize.[62]

Segrè served on the university's powerful Budget Committee from 1961 to 1965 and was chairman of the Physics Department from 1965 to 1966. He supported Teller's successful bid to separate the

Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in 1970.[63] He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1963.[64] He was one of the trustees of Fermilab from 1965 to 1968. He attended its inauguration with Laura Fermi in 1974.[65] During the 1950s, Segrè edited Fermi's papers. He later published a biography of Fermi, Enrico Fermi: Physicist (1970). He published his own lecture notes as From X-rays to Quarks: Modern Physicists and Their Discoveries (1980) and From Falling Bodies to Radio Waves: Classical Physicists and Their Discoveries (1984). He also edited the Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science from 1958 to 1977 and wrote an autobiography, A Mind Always in Motion (1993), which was published posthumously.[66][63]

Elfriede died in October 1970, and Segrè married Rosa Mines in February 1972.[16] He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1973.[67] That year he reached the University of California's compulsory retirement age. He continued teaching the history of physics.[68] In 1974 he returned to the University of Rome as a professor, but served only a year before reaching the mandatory retirement age.[63] Segrè died from a heart attack at the age of 84 while out walking near his home in Lafayette.[69] Active as a photographer, Segrè took many photos documenting events and people in the history of modern science. After his death Rosa donated many of his photographs to the American Institute of Physics, which named its photographic archive of physics history in his honor. The collection was bolstered by a subsequent bequest from Rosa after her death from an accident in Tivoli in 1997.[63][70][16]

Notes

  1. ^ "Emilio Segrè - Facts". Nobelprize.org. Retrieved 20 April 2018.
  2. ^ Segrè 1993, pp. 2–3.
  3. ^ Segrè 1993, p. 6.
  4. ^ a b c Jackson 2002, pp. 5–6.
  5. ^ Fermi 1954, pp. 43–44.
  6. ^ Segrè 1993, pp. 44–49.
  7. ^ Segrè 1993, p. 52.
  8. ^ Segrè 1993, pp. 54–59.
  9. ^ Segrè 1993, pp. 61, 304.
  10. ^ Jackson 2002, pp. 7–8.
  11. ^ Segrè 1993, pp. 64–70.
  12. ^ Segrè 1993, pp. 86–87.
  13. ^ "Emilio Segrè – Biography". The Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 22 May 2013.
  14. ^ Segrè 1993, pp. 96–97.
  15. ^ Segrè 1993, p. 107.
  16. ^ a b c Jackson 2002, p. 7.
  17. ^ Segrè 1993, pp. 104–106.
  18. ^ Jackson 2002, pp. 9–10.
  19. ^ Segrè 1993, pp. 115–118.
  20. S2CID 4136886
    .
  21. ^ Segrè 1993, pp. 128–132.
  22. ^ Segrè 1993, p. 140.
  23. ^ Segrè 1993, pp. 145–149.
  24. ^ Jackson 2002, pp. 11–12.
  25. ^ Segrè 1993, pp. 147–148.
  26. ^ Hoffman, Ghiorso & Seaborg 2000, p. 15.
  27. ISSN 0031-899X
    .
  28. ISSN 0031-899X
    .
  29. ISSN 0031-899X
    .
  30. ^ Segrè 1993, p. 153.
  31. ^ Jackson 2002, p. 11.
  32. ISSN 0031-899X
    .
  33. ^ a b Segrè 1993, pp. 155–156.
  34. ^ Seaborg, Glenn T. "An Early History of LBNL: Elements 93 and 94". Advanced Computing for Science Department, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Archived from the original on 5 November 2014. Retrieved 17 September 2008.
  35. OSTI 5808140
    . LBL-13492, DE82 004551.
  36. ^ Segrè 1993, pp. 170–172.
  37. ^ Segrè 1993, pp. 177–180.
  38. ^ Hawkins 1961, p. 101.
  39. ^ Hoddeson et al. 1993, p. 96.
  40. ^ Segrè 1993, p. 186.
  41. ^ a b c Hoddeson et al. 1993, pp. 234–236.
  42. ^ Hawkins 1961, pp. 120–121.
  43. ^ Hoddeson et al. 1993, pp. 236–239.
  44. ^ Hoddeson et al. 1993, pp. 239–244.
  45. ^ Segrè 1993, pp. 195, 214–215.
  46. ^ Segrè 1993, pp. 204–205.
  47. ^ Hoddeson et al. 1993, p. 357.
  48. ^ Hoddeson et al. 1993, p. 375.
  49. ^ Segrè 1993, pp. 206–210.
  50. ^ Jackson 2002, p. 13.
  51. ^ a b Segrè 1993, pp. 234–239.
  52. ^ Segrè 1993, pp. 245–247.
  53. ^ Segrè 1993, p. 240.
  54. ^ "Emilio Segre". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved 14 November 2022.
  55. ^ Segrè 1993, p. 253.
  56. ^
    S2CID 37761659
    .
  57. doi:10.1098/rspa.1931.0130
    .
  58. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.43.491
    .
  59. ^ Segrè 1993, pp. 255–257.
  60. ^ Segrè, Emilio (11 December 1959). "Properties of antinucleons – Nobel Lecture" (PDF). The Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 31 May 2013.
  61. ^ "The Nobel Prize in Physics 1959". The Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 31 May 2013.
  62. ^ Jackson 2002, pp. 15–16.
  63. ^ a b c d "Emilio Gino Segrè January 30, 1905–April 22, 1989". National Academy of Sciences biography. Retrieved 2 June 2013.
  64. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 14 November 2022.
  65. ^ Segrè 1993, pp. 284–287.
  66. ^ Jackson 2002, pp. 17, 25.
  67. ^ "Emilio Gino Segre". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 14 November 2022.
  68. ^ Segrè 1993, p. 288.
  69. ^ Flint, Peter (24 April 1989). "Dr. Emilio G. Segre Is Dead at 84; Shared Nobel for Studies of Atom". The New York Times. Retrieved 31 May 2013.
  70. ^ "Photos of physicists, astronomers and other scientists – Emilio Segrè Visual Archives". American Institute of Physics. Retrieved 13 March 2012.

See also

References

Bibliography

Further reading

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