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
Enrico Fermi a much larger scale. Fermi and Szilárd collaborated on a design of a device to achieve a self-sustaining nuclear reaction—a nuclear reactor. Owing to the rate of absorption of neutrons by the hydrogen in water, it was unlikely that a self-sustaining reaction could be achieved with natural uranium and water as a neutron moderator. Fermi suggested, based on his work with neutrons, that the reaction could be achieved with uranium oxide blocks and graphite as a moderator instead of water. This would reduce the neutron capture rate, and in theory make a self-sustaining chain reaction possible. Szilárd came up with