Enrico Fermi 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 Prize in Physics for his work on induced radioactivity by neutron bombardment and for the discovery of transuranium elements.
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