L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2019 www.italoamericano.org 16 L'Italo-Americano LA VITA ITALIANA TRADITIONS HISTORY CULTURE D ear Readers,  The recent L'Italo Amer icano interview w ith D r. F ederico F oggin, the Italian born physicist, inven- tor and entrepreneur known for des igning the firs t commercial micro processor, filled me with glee, because I feel that our Italian American youth has been underserved. W e m u s t e n c o u r a g e o u r young in the study of science, technology, engineering, and math, should they begin at an early age to show a keen interest in basic technology as did Fed- erico Faggin when he began building model airplanes.  We have many science relat- ed role models: however, unlike our singers or spaghetti sauce notables our scientific achievers are largely unknowns. B a c k i n t h e 1 9 9 0 ' s F r a n k Cannata, then president of the National Italian American Ser- vice organization UNICO, noted the paucity of publicity given in the media to Italian American s c i e n c e a c h i e v e m e n t s a n d f o u n d e d t h e a n n u a l U N I C O Marconi Awards to help fill the void, but we still have a long way to go... *** I would like to suggest that Italo American groups already annually funding scholarships, grant at least one of them to stu- dents with an interest in science. The amount is not important, what matters is that our organi- z a t i o n s b e g i n t o f o c u s o n encouraging our youth in the study of science, technology, math, engineering or any other scientific interests they may have. Following are a few scientific achievers with an Italian connec- tion that have come along since t h e d a y s o f G a l i l e o ( 1 5 6 4 - 1 6 4 2 ) a n d M a r c o n i ( 1 8 7 4 - 1937): Enrico Fermi, was born in Rome in 1901. H e b e c a m e f a s c i n a t e d b y p h y s i c s a t a n e a r l y a g e a n d entered the University of Pisa in 1918. He also studied in Rome, where he focused on nuclear physics, then in its infancy. In 1926, while teaching at the Uni- versity of Florence, he began publishing scientific papers that w e r e r e a d w o r l d w i d e a n d infused a new spirit into the Ital- ian physics community as he e x p e r i m e n t e d a n d p u b l i s h e d papers on elementary particles. In a series of experiments in 1934, Fermi used slowed neu- trons to bombard atoms and dis- covered over sixty new sub- atomic particles. In 1938, Fermi learned that he was to be award- e d t h e N o b e l p r i z e i n physics. Unfortunately the dicta- tor of Italy, Mussolini, urged by Hitler and his German allies, i n t r o d u c e d a s e t o f a n t i - semitic regulations for Italy. Fermi's wife Laura was Jewish so he and his wife worked out a plan. He quietly arranged for a position at New York's Colum- bia University which had previ- ously offered him a job. Then he, his wife, and his two c h i l d r e n l e f t f o r S t o c k h o l m , where he was to accept the prize. Afterward, they calmly got on a ship and, instead of going back t o I t a l y , s a i l e d f o r t h e N e w World. The United States physics establishment was in a state of excitement when Fermi arrived o n J a n u a r y 9 , 1 9 3 9 . B y 1942, Fermi and Emilio Segre, an old classmate who had stud- ied with Fermi in Rome, and who learned during a family vacation to the US in 1938, that all Jewish professors would be f i r e d f r o m I t a l i a n Universities, had not returned to Italy. Together they both now worked on the US Manhattan Project. *** The Manhattan Project, was the deliberately deceptive code name for a secret atomic project g o i n g o n i n N e w M e x i c o , nowhere near the streets of Man- hattan. A n e n t i r e c i t y o f o v e r 6 0 thousand people was built in the New Mexico desert around Los Alamos, however, most workers did not know what they were making. Only the top scientists, sworn to secrecy, know they w e r e i n a r a c e w i t h G e r m a n nuclear experts. After several years, on July 16, 1945 the first successful atomic bomb tests took place in the New Mexico desert. Perhaps in a nod to the Italian heritage of Enrico Fermi and Emilio Segre the prearranged physicist code was "the Italian Navigator has landed in the New World." *** Alberto Ghiorso, a renowned nuclear scientist who co-discov- ered a dozen chemical elements heavier than uranium, died at his home in Berkeley, California, at age 95 in 2011. In a fledgling "radiation lab" on the UC Berkeley campus just before World War II, physicists l e d b y E d w i n M c M i l l a n a n d Glenn Seaborg produced the first known chemical elements heav- ier than uranium - to be known as neptunium and plutonium. Al Ghiorso, a young engineer and investor who with his col- leagues worked in the same lab, soon would discover more of those elements that any other team in the world. The list bears historic names in the Periodic Table of the Ele- m e n t s : A m e r i c i u m C u r i u m , Berkelium, Californium, Eisteni- um, Fermium, Mendelevium, Nobelium, Lawrencium, Ruther- fordium, Dubnium and finally Seaborgium. M r . G h i o r s o w a s b o r n i n Vallejo, grew up in Alamed, and as a teenager was already build- ing radio circuits. He graduated from UC Berkeley as an electri- c a l e n g i n e e r i n 1 9 3 7 , a n d his invention of a commercial Geiger counter quickly attracted Seaborg's attention at Berkeley. When the pre-war quest for the atomic bomb began, Seaborg moved to Chicago, and he invit- ed Mr. Ghiorso to join him to work on the Manhattan Project. After the war, they returned to Berkeley lab, where Mr. Ghiorso a n d h i s c o l l e a g u e s u s e d a cyclotron to smash atoms togeth- er and produce fast-disappearing heavy metals. In 1950s, Mr. Ghiorso led team that designed and built the radiation laboratory's heavy ion accelerator, the Hilac. New discoveries demanded increasingly sophisticated exper- imental machines to create the n e w e l e m e n t s a n d c o m p l e x instruments to detect their fleet- ing radiation signals. Mr. Ghiorso led their devel- opment. He also conceived com- bining the Hilac with the radia- tion lab's Bevatron to device t h e B e v a l a c , a n i n s t r u m e n t whose high-energy ion beam was long used to treat hundreds of cancer patients. ***

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