The Last Man Who Knew Everything Read online

  The late nineteenth century found Italy in the midst of a belated but intense period of industrialization. Unification of the country in 1870 set off a national effort to catch up with the northern European industrial powerhouses. One result was rapid urbanization. Rome, a sleepy midsized city of about 150,000 in 1849, when the founder of modern Italy, Giuseppe Garibaldi, first attempted to bring it into a unified Italian state, grew to slightly over 225,000 people at the time of unification in 1870. By 1901 it had doubled in size to some 460,000 residents. Any such dramatic increase in an urban population places extraordinary demands on a city’s infrastructure. In the case of Rome, entire new residential sections were thrown up virtually overnight, fundamentally changing the look and feel of the city, particularly in the elevated eastern section, perched above the Quirinal, Viminal, and Esquiline Hills.

  Another result was the rapid development of a national railroad system that, though predominantly focused on the more prosperous northern communities of Milan, Genoa, and Turin, provided both employment and a certain cultural cachet for Roman workers, as well. Italians were, and remain today, proud of their train system. Because it was developed somewhat later than the English and French railway systems, Italy’s railroad benefited from technological advances unavailable during the earlier efforts of its industrial neighbors to the north. It provided employment for laborers and for the better educated technological elite and quickly moved through a series of regional mergers to centralized national ownership. The Ministry of Railroads was a prestigious place to work, and Alberto could be legitimately proud of his career.

  In the early years his work had moved him from town to town, and he ended up in Rome around 1888. Quickly recognizing his abilities, his employers promoted him first to accountant, then to inspector, and eventually to Capo Divisione, a fairly high level in the Italian civil service roughly equivalent to a brigadier general in the Italian military. By the time Enrico was born, in 1901, Alberto had even been named a Cavaliere, or knight. Though not quite as prestigious as its British counterpart, the title reflected the value his employers placed on his skills and performance. More titles were to follow.

  In surviving photographs, Alberto appears reserved and even a bit aloof. Attractive but intense eyes peer out from behind wire-rimmed glasses, set above hollow cheeks and a mouth obscured by a generous, and presumably fashionable, handlebar moustache. Setting aside the complete lack of humor in his eyes, one could imagine him singing Verdi arias while shaving, a penchant commented upon by Emilio Segrè, the Italian physicist. He clearly had ability and ambition and climbed the bureaucratic ladder at the ministry with little trouble.

  Along the way, he met a woman named Ida de Gattis. Ida came from Bari, just above the “heel” of the Italian boot in the southeast of the country. She was a schoolteacher and younger than Alberto by some thirteen years. Trim and attractive, with delicate features and soulful, gentle, timid eyes, she caught Alberto’s attention, and they married in 1898. The newlyweds moved to an apartment not far from Rome’s central train station, Termini, at Via Gaeta 19.

  The neighborhood just northwest of Termini was designed to accommodate the influx of workers to the new Italian capital in the most efficient and direct way possible. Streets formed a grid pattern and were lined with small and relatively undistinguished apartment buildings painted in a variety of Mediterranean pastel colors. Via Gaeta 19 stands today, a five-story ochre edifice with two apartments on each floor and a plaque indicating its illustrious pedigree as Enrico Fermi’s birthplace. Do Not Disturb signs hang above the doorbells of the two apartments on the third floor, presumably to ward off pilgrims to Enrico Fermi’s first home.

  Here, Ida gave birth to three children: Maria in 1899, Giulio in 1900, and Enrico in 1901. Perhaps overwhelmed by the arrival of three infants in quick succession, or perhaps because as the wife of a secure and increasingly prosperous civil servant she felt she had the resources and social position to do so, Ida Fermi packed Giulio and Enrico off with nannies to the countryside almost as soon as each was born, a practice common among wealthier Romans. Maria stayed home under Ida’s direct care. We do not know whether the brothers were kept together, nor do we know when Giulio arrived home, but it seems to have been before Enrico. Enrico’s wife, Laura, later wrote that, owing to “delicate health,” Enrico was kept in the countryside for two and a half years. At that point he was returned to Rome and, confronting his real family for the first time, he burst into tears of fright. Ida delivered a stern scolding. Crying was forbidden in her household. He quieted down, and from that time on, Laura speculates, he was responsive to strict authority.

  FIGURE 1.1. Giulio, Enrico, and Maria Fermi, 1904. Courtesy of Rachel Fermi.

  Giulio and Enrico were inseparable. Enrico was somewhat shy and awkward, and Giulio evidently decided that he would be Enrico’s constant companion and protector. The relationship is apparent in one of the first portraits of all three children, taken in 1904. Maria stands at the right side of the frame, strong and proud, while the brothers hold hands at the left side of the frame, Giulio offering protection to his timid younger brother.

  It was not long before the boys became interested in science. Perhaps they were inspired by Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of radio, who, in the first decades of the twentieth century, was grabbing headlines around the world with his experiments in electricity. Although much of his work was done in Britain, Marconi had become a hero in his native Italy. In the process, he served as an inspiration to countless Italian children, and it would have been strange indeed if the brothers did not come to worship him. As they grew older the two boys became obsessed with electricity, engineering, and everything related. They would come home from school and spend their free time designing and making electric motors, mechanical gadgets, and other devices. Like many boys of their age, they were also inspired by the dawn of the age of powered flight and reportedly designed an aircraft engine that impressed experts. They ate, drank, and slept science and technology.

  The boys were apparently equally bright, but there the similarity ended. As a child Enrico was quiet and withdrawn, always most comfortable in the presence of his outgoing, more socially adept older brother. When very young he had a bit of a temper, which earned him the family nickname “little match,” but he eventually learned to control that. Later in life Enrico developed a robust, sturdy, even gregarious presence, but as a child he was distinctly delicate and introverted, perhaps taking after his mother. Giulio had greater physical presence, not only because he was a year older but because he cut a more social, more verbal, outgoing figure, and initially he was a better student. He was also, according to the accepted narrative, his mother’s favorite. Enrico was a slow starter, physically awkward, not particularly articulate, and incapable of making a good impression during his first years of school. This began to change, though, and somewhere along the way Enrico developed an affinity for mathematics. Although the main fare of Italian elementary education at the time was classical studies, Enrico began to impress teachers and became one of the top students in his class. The brothers spent time after school supplementing their somewhat mediocre technical education at a nondescript liceo (middle and high school) by reading science books and magazines, keeping themselves abreast of a rapidly scientific world. They may not have understood all that was going on around them, but they must have been aware of developments and excited by them.

  FIGURE 1.2. Drawing of Giulio by Enrico, 1914. Photo by Susan Schwartz. Courtesy of Department of Physics library, University of Pisa.

  In the archives of the University of Pisa’s physics department resides a drawing that Fermi made of his brother, dated June 20, 1914. Enrico was no artist, but he enjoyed doodling and sketching, and the profile he drafted of his brother, with obvious care, affection, and attention to detail, demonstrates better than perhaps anything else his feelings toward Giulio.

  Less clear is the relationship that Enrico had during early childhood with his older sister
, Maria. It may be that the two brothers created a hermetically sealed bubble around themselves, with little room for anyone else. It may also be that, from a cultural point of view, girls were neither expected nor encouraged to have scientific or technical interests, so Maria would probably have not been responsive even if the brothers had tried to engage her. We know that sometime later Enrico tried to talk to Maria about a physics book he picked up at a used bookstall, but she paid little attention. At this point in his life, his relationship with his sister seems to have been distant, particularly in contrast with the relationship with Giulio.

  IN 1908 THE FAMILY MOVED FROM VIA GAETA TO A LARGER APARTMENT building a few blocks away in Via Principe Umberto. They had more space, but still no hot water. It was home for Enrico until he left for university in 1918.

  Many photographs of the Fermi children have come down to us from this period, suggesting the Fermi family’s relatively comfortable financial circumstances. Alberto’s income was such that photographic portraits and even some candid photography were regular features of family life. In many of these photographs, Giulio and Maria have bright, engaged expressions, while Enrico usually looks dreamy and distracted, reserved, and somewhat uncomfortable. Ida has a slightly nervous, anxious look about her. Alberto is generally absent.

  ON JANUARY 12, 1915, GIULIO DIED.

  The boy developed an abscess in his throat, and Ida and Maria accompanied Giulio to the hospital to have it removed surgically. Doctors assured Ida that the operation was routine, an outpatient procedure, and there was nothing to be worried about. As Laura Fermi describes it:

  On the appointed morning Mrs. Fermi and Maria accompanied him to the hospital and set themselves to wait quietly in the hall. Suddenly there was a great commotion. Nurses rushed into the hall, saying aimlessly, “Don’t worry; you should not worry.” Their tone was strained. The surgeon came. He asked the women to keep calm. He could not explain, he could not quite understand himself what had happened. The boy had died before the anesthesia was completed.

  She concludes by observing, “The blow could not have been heavier, nor the family less prepared to receive it.”

  Ever since returning home from his first two years in the countryside, Fermi and his brother had been inseparable. Enrico had relied heavily on his more outgoing sibling. Their bond was probably closer than any Enrico established later in life. He was devastated, but characteristically would not show it. It was the first of many incidents in which he forced himself to hide his emotions from the outside world, even from those closest to him. He did, however, resolve after several weeks to walk by the hospital where Giulio died, to confront the tragedy head-on to prove that he could deal with his grief.

  Many years later he named his son after the brother he lost.

  His mother’s grief was more visible, more sustained, and more debilitating. For years afterward she would break into tears suddenly, without provocation, and she spent long periods in a state of depression. She gradually withdrew from the family and died in the spring of 1924 at the age of fifty-three, an end certainly hastened by Giulio’s passing.

  What might have happened had Giulio lived into adulthood? Knowing what Enrico would eventually accomplish, it is almost inconceivable that Enrico was the less talented of the two. Perhaps, incredibly, Giulio would have continued to outshine his little brother. Or maybe little Enrico would have eventually eclipsed the more socially adept Giulio. Maybe their interests would have diverged at a certain point, with one going into a field other than physics. Even more satisfying to contemplate, perhaps they might have worked together in brilliant harmony throughout their lives. In the end, however, we are left with unsatisfying, unanswerable questions.

  AT ABOUT THIS TIME, TWO IMPORTANT PEOPLE ENTERED FERMI’S LIFE.

  One was a classmate of Giulio’s named Enrico Persico. Persico had observed the brothers from afar for some time and had concluded that there was no room for a third wheel in the relationship. With Giulio gone, Persico reached out to the younger brother. His efforts were greeted enthusiastically. The two Enricos shared a love of science and technology, and soon they picked up where the two brothers had left off, absorbing science and math books, concocting experiments, and hanging out together whenever possible.

  Persico was not much taller than Fermi, but he had the face of a tall man, dramatically elongated with a prominent aquiline nose, an almost nonexistent forehead, and eyes that sparkled with intelligence and good humor. He became something of a fixture around the Fermi household. Persico soon realized that his new friend was exceptional. Years later he wrote about these early days of their friendship:

  We formed the habit of taking long walks together, crossing the city of Rome from one side to the other, discussing all kinds of subjects with the brashness of youth. But in these adolescent talks Enrico brought a precision of ideas, a self-assurance, and an originality which continually surprised me. Furthermore, in mathematics and in physics he showed a knowledge of many subjects well beyond what was taught at school. He knew these topics not in a scholastic fashion, but in such a way that he could use them with extreme facility and familiarity. For him, even at this time, to know a theorem or a law meant chiefly to know how to use it.

  On these walks, the two Enricos would sometimes go hunting for books to satisfy their hunger for science, a quest that brought them from the grid streets of new Rome to the ancient, meandering alleys and passageways of the historic center of the city, off the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II. A left turn down Via del Paradiso, a particularly narrow alley, led them eventually to a large, ancient square, the Campo de’ Fiori, where every Wednesday a used book market attracted visitors in search of the odd special volume unavailable at regular bookstores. The boys scoured the stalls for items of interest. One particular edition they found was a nineteenth-century physics text by a Jesuit priest named Andrea Caraffa. A two-volume summary of all that was known about classical physics in 1840, the year of its publication, the boys quickly snapped it up, and Fermi absorbed it enthusiastically. As reported by Laura Fermi, he couldn’t stop talking about it to his sister, Maria, as he read it. Indeed, so enthralled was he that he barely noticed it had been written in Latin.

  The two boys conducted a variety of experiments, some of them fairly sophisticated given the boys’ ages and education. They measured the density of Roman tap water. They calculated the strength of the gravitational and magnetic fields in Rome. They even tried to explain the behavior of a spinning top, even though neither knew the mathematics and physics that would have made this difficult problem a bit easier.

  Particularly impressive, in retrospect, was Fermi’s knowledge of and enthusiasm for the theory of relativity. In later years Persico recalled extended conversations in which his young friend would enthuse about Einstein’s radical theory of gravity. Persico served as Fermi’s first “student,” if one discounts Enrico’s failed earlier attempts to interest Maria in the Caraffa book. Fermi enjoyed explaining ideas to his new friend, and Persico was a ready pupil, eagerly absorbing Fermi’s explanations of fairly complex concepts in physics. This was the first time that Enrico discovered his knack for conveying physics in ways that others less gifted could clearly understand, a knack that was to figure prominently in future years.

  With Persico, Fermi was educating himself with the Caraffa volumes and other scientific books, and at liceo, he was exposed to Latin, Greek, history, and Italian literature. Fermi particularly enjoyed the traditional Italian epic poem “Orlando Furioso” (the Italian version of the “Song of Roland”) and in later years would impress friends with recitations of Dante from memory. Languages came easily to him, which may explain why he was hardly aware that the Caraffa volumes were written in Latin. In these subjects, he was a good student, but not extraordinary. It is clear that any advanced mathematics and physics he absorbed had nothing at all to do with what he was learning in school.

  Fermi and Persico separated in 1918 when Fermi headed to Pisa for university and Pe
rsico remained in Rome. Over the next four years, they stayed in close touch by letter and saw each other often during school holidays. When Fermi eventually returned to Rome for good, they resumed their deep and lasting friendship.

  Enrico had fun with other youngsters, as well, in the process developing a love of outdoor physical activity that would continue unabated throughout his life. He loved to play soccer and the perennial Italian schoolboy favorite French War, described by Laura Fermi as an Italian form of the Cops and Robbers game so popular in America, with just a hint of youthful nationalism. Yet he never drew personally close to these playmates, saving his friendship and affection for the other Enrico.

  While the two Enricos’ bond strengthened as they explored the world of physics, another person entered Fermi’s life, an older man who knew a great deal more than either of the boys about mathematics and physics. This man would become central to Fermi’s early intellectual development.

  ADOLFO AMIDEI WAS AN ENGINEER FOR THE RAILWAY COMPANY, with a rank of chief inspector—one rung above Alberto Fermi. In spite of the difference in rank, the two men became friends, and during the summer of 1914 they began to walk home together after work, which suggests that they lived close to one another.

  Amidei was from Volterra, about fifty miles south of Pisa. Seven years younger than Alberto Fermi, he showed early technical proficiency and was admitted to the pure mathematics program at the University of Pisa, where he eventually broadened his studies to include physics. He joined the regional railway system as an engineer and junior inspector, and when various regional companies merged to create a national railway company, he made the move and was soon promoted to full inspector. By the time Amidei met young Enrico, he was a principal inspector. He was promoted repeatedly throughout his long and successful career and retired in 1940 with the title of Capo Compagnia 1a Classe. Along the way, like Alberto, he was named a Cavaliere by the Italian government.