Atoms in the Family: My Life With Enrico Fermi [Hardcover]

Laura Fermi (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1954

Dust jacket notes: "If one man can be selected as being most responsible for the coming of the Atomic Age, that man is Enrico Fermi. His wife Laura here writes of the great scientist and of their life together. She also explains with great skill and simplicity some of the basic facts behind the atom bomb and the crisis of our time. Enrico Fermi, winner of the Nobel Prize and the Congressional Medal for Merit, was the leader of the research team that brought about the first self-sustaining chain reaction, man-made, the great experimental step that led to the atom bomb. Mrs. Fermi in these pages allows the reader to share the adventures of her life in Italy, the process of Americanization, the war secrecy, the achievements and the back-breaking labor of one of the most remarkable episodes in history. She describes physicists in action - even those who happened to share the most dreadful secret known to man - in a humorous, teasing mood. Einstein, Bohr, Urey, Oppenheimer, Groves - even Pontecorvo and Fuchs - stand out as human beings with their weaknesses and their quirks. Atoms in the Family is a tapestry, brilliantly woven with threads of narrative, humor, and anecdote. Little-known details of what was going on behind the scenes during the war give to this book historical value, while the fast-paced account of life with a celebrity makes it an entertaining adventure story."

Product Details

• Hardcover: 265 pages
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press; 1st edition (1954)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000G2NJIM
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,525,659 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars 25 % biography of Enrico Fermi., November 10, 1998

By 

Angel Alvarez-Cedrón - See all my reviews

This review is from: Atoms in the Family: My Life with Enrico Fermi (Paperback)

Laura Fermi explains her husband life: the family, the adventures of the italian physicists, the Nobel prize, the American life, the Manhattan project. But Fermi life is full of physics, and in the book you don't find any explanation of the discoveries which took most of his time. It is a pity that Laura didn't get more information from her husband work to realize how great it was and how it influenced the future of quantum mechanic. Fermi was one of the top ones. I recommend this book as a preliminar biography but not as a deep one.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Life with a genius, in the strange world of Los Alamos, September 24, 1999

By 

N. A. Woodward "normfromga" (Warner Robins, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Atoms in the Family: My Life with Enrico Fermi (Paperback)

I rated this so high, partly because it is one of the few books I remember reading, 35+ years ago. Around the same time I had read another book about the Manhattan Project, "The Traitors," by Alan Moorehead (apparently out of print.) Between the two I found out that most of the scientists' wives were not told why their husbands were so excited on the night of July 16, 1945 until after the war was over; meanwhile Stalin was notified through his spy network within 48 hours, during the Potsdam Conference.

I also thought she told a great story about the difficulties for a family to not only move into a strange country with strange languages and customs, only to find themselves rushed into an isolated paramilitary environment.

No great lessons in nuclear fission, lots for nuclear families.

BTW, I was surprised that Amazon does not cross-list this among the other Manhattan Project books.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A charming account of Fermi's life by his wife, August 10, 1998

By 

henrique fleming - See all my reviews

This review is from: Atoms in the Family: My Life with Enrico Fermi (Paperback)

I first read this book more than 40 years ago. I still reread it, now and then. It is the source of most of the anecdotes that helped to explain, and disseminate, the Fermi style of doing physics. I am particularly fond of the memories of the youth of Laura Fermi, when Enrico was a young "dottore", and, together with a group of friends, used to hike the Italian Alps at holidays. Everything was used to teach science, or the way of thinking needed in science (for instance, the thermodynamics of the frying pan!). Later you'll find this "physics at the finger tips" approach used to estimate the power emitted at the first nuclear explosion. A great book.