Emilio Segrè facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Emilio Segrè
|
|
|---|---|
Segrè in 1959
|
|
| Born |
Emilio Gino Segrè
1 February 1905 Tivoli, Kingdom of Italy
|
| Died | 22 April 1989 (aged 84) Lafayette, California, U.S.
|
| Citizenship | Italy (1905–44) United States (1944–89) |
| Alma mater | Sapienza University of Rome |
| Known for | Discovery of antiproton, technetium, and astatine |
| Awards | Nobel Prize in Physics (1959) |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | Los Alamos National Laboratory University of California, Berkeley University of Palermo Sapienza University of Rome Columbia University |
| Doctoral advisor | Enrico Fermi |
| Doctoral students | Thomas Ypsilantis Herbert York |
| Signature | |
 |
|
Emilio Gino Segrè (born February 1, 1905 – died April 22, 1989) was a brilliant Italian physicist. He later became an American citizen. Segrè won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1959. He earned this award for helping discover the antiproton. This is a tiny particle that is the opposite of a proton.
Segrè also discovered two new chemical elements. These were technetium and astatine. His work greatly helped us understand the world of tiny particles. He worked with many other famous scientists during his career.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Emilio Segrè was born in Tivoli, Italy, near Rome. His family was Jewish. His father owned a paper mill. Emilio first studied engineering at the University of Rome La Sapienza. But he soon became very interested in physics.
In 1927, he met Enrico Fermi, a famous physicist. Fermi and another professor, Franco Rasetti, were looking for smart students. Segrè joined their lab in Rome. He switched his studies to physics and earned his degree in 1928. His thesis was about how light behaves in certain materials.
After serving in the Italian Army, Segrè returned to the physics lab. He worked with Edoardo Amaldi on early physics research. He also studied how magnetic fields affect light. This work led him to visit labs in Amsterdam and Hamburg. There, he worked with other important scientists like Pieter Zeeman and Otto Stern.
Becoming a Physics Professor
In 1932, Segrè became an assistant professor at the University of Rome. He was part of a famous group of young scientists. They were known as the "Via Panisperna boys." This group made many important discoveries in nuclear physics.
In 1936, Segrè married Elfriede Spiro. She was a Jewish woman who had moved to Italy from Germany. They had three children together. After getting married, Segrè looked for a more stable job. He became a professor and director of the Physics Institute at the University of Palermo.
While in Palermo, Segrè visited Ernest O. Lawrence's lab in California. Lawrence had a machine called a cyclotron. This machine could speed up tiny particles. Segrè noticed that some old parts from the cyclotron were radioactive. In 1937, Lawrence sent him a piece of metal from the cyclotron. Segrè and his colleague, Carlo Perrier, studied it carefully. They found a brand new element! They named it technetium. This was special because it was the first element made by humans that isn't found naturally on Earth.
Moving to America
In 1938, Segrè visited California again. While he was there, Italy passed new laws. These laws were unfair to Jewish people. They stopped Jews from working at universities. Because Segrè was Jewish, he could not go back to his job in Italy. He became an immigrant.
Ernest Lawrence offered Segrè a job at his lab in California. It was a lower-paying job than he had in Italy. But it allowed him to stay in the United States. Segrè was worried about his family in Europe. He arranged for his wife and son to join him in California.
At Lawrence's lab, Segrè continued his important research. He worked with Glenn Seaborg to study different forms of technetium. One form, technetium-99m, is now used in many medical tests. He also helped discover another missing element on the periodic table, astatine. He worked with other scientists to create it by hitting bismuth with tiny particles.
Segrè also helped create plutonium-239. This was done using Lawrence's cyclotron in 1940. This discovery would become very important later on.
Working on the Manhattan Project
When the United States entered World War II, many physicists joined war efforts. In 1942, Segrè was asked to join the Manhattan Project. This was a secret project to build the first atomic bomb. Segrè moved to Los Alamos, New Mexico, with his family in 1943.
At Los Alamos, Segrè led a group of scientists. Their job was to study radioactivity. They measured how radioactive different materials were. This was very important for building the bomb. His group found that a certain type of plutonium had impurities. This meant that one of the planned bomb designs would not work. This was a big challenge for the project.
In 1944, Segrè and his wife became citizens of the United States. His group also measured the radiation from the first atomic bomb test in 1945.
Later Career and Nobel Prize
After World War II ended, Segrè returned to the University of California, Berkeley. He became a full professor of physics. He also taught about the history of science.
In the 1950s, Segrè and his team started looking for the antiproton. Scientists had already found the positron, which is the opposite of an electron. They believed there should be an antiproton, the opposite of a proton. But no one had found it yet.
Using a powerful machine called the Bevatron, Segrè and his colleague Owen Chamberlain found clear evidence of antiprotons. This was a huge discovery in physics! For this work, Segrè and Chamberlain shared the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Segrè continued to be an active scientist and writer. He edited the papers of his mentor, Enrico Fermi. He also wrote a biography about Fermi. Segrè published his own lecture notes in books like From X-rays to Quarks. He also wrote his autobiography, A Mind Always in Motion, which was published after he passed away.
Emilio Segrè was also a talented photographer. He took many pictures that show the history of modern science. After his death, his photographs were given to the American Institute of Physics. They named their photo archive after him to honor his contributions.
Segrè died in 1989 at the age of 84. He had a heart attack while walking near his home in California.
See also
In Spanish: Emilio Gino Segrè para niños
