Born September 29^th, 1901, in Rome, Italy, Enrico Fermi became a distinguished physicist.  Fermi turned to physics to overcome his grief following his brother’s death at age 14.  During the 1930s, he became afraid of persecution in Fascist Italy because he had a Jewish wife.  To avoid these troubles, Fermi moved to America and began working at Columbia University.  His work centered on beta decay, the development of the first nuclear reactor, and quantum theory.  His work on nuclear fission, which went into the developments of the Manhattan Program, won Fermi the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics. 

*posted September 26 - September 30, 2005