Enrico Fermi Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Teller and Hans Bethe. For a full list of his papers, see pages 75–78 in ref. Enrico Fermi Enrico Fermi (; ; 29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954) was an Italian and naturalized-American physicist and the creator of the world's first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1. He has been called the "architect of the nuclear age" and the "architect of the atomic bomb". He was one of very few physicists to excel in both theoretical physics and experimental physics. Fermi held several patents related to the use of nuclear power, and was awarded the 1938 Nobel
Marshall Holloway as a laboratory instrument to test critical mass calculations and the effect of various tamper materials. The Water Boiler group was headed by Donald W. Kerst from the University of Illinois, and the group designed and built the Water Boiler, which achieved its criticality in May 1944 under the control of Enrico Fermi, after one final addition of uranium enriched to 14% uranium 235. It was world third reactor but the first reactor to use enriched uranium as a fuel, using most of the world's supply at the time, and the first to use liquid nuclear fuel in the form