Enrico Fermi of his life, Fermi questioned his faith in society at large to make wise choices about nuclear technology. He said: Fermi underwent an exploratory operation in Billings Memorial Hospital on 9 October 1954, after which he returned home. 50 days later, Fermi died at age 53 of stomach cancer in his home in Chicago. His memorial service was held at the University of Chicago chapel, where colleagues, Samuel K. Allison, Emilio Segrè, and Herbert L. Anderson spoke, mourning the loss of one of the world's "most brilliant and productive physicists." His body was interred at Oak Woods Cemetery. Fermi received
Enrico Fermi down once more a few hours later. The problem was traced to neutron poisoning from xenon-135, a fission product with a half-life of 9.2 hours. DuPont had deviated from the Metallurgical Laboratory's original design in which the reactor had 1,500 tubes arranged in a circle, and had added 504 tubes to fill in the corners. The scientists had originally considered this over-engineering a waste of time and money, but Fermi realized that if all 2,004 tubes were loaded, the reactor could reach the required power level and efficiently produce plutonium. In mid-1944, Robert Oppenheimer persuaded Fermi to join his Project