Enrico Fermi was born in Rome, Italy in 1901. When his brother Giulio died during a minor surgery in 1915, 14-year-old Enrico threw himself into the study of physics as a way of coping with his grief. According to his later recollection, he would walk each day in front of the hospital where Giulio had died, until he could look back at the event with detachment.

A friend of the family, Adolfo Amidei, guided the young Fermi's study of algebra, trigonometry, analytic geometry, calculus and theoretical mechanics. Amidei also suggested Fermi attend not a university in Rome but to apply to the prestigious "Scuola Normale Superiore" of Pisa, a special university-college for selected gifted students in 1918.

In 1938, Fermi won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his "demonstrations of the existence of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation, and for his related discovery of nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons".

His theory of beta decay introduced the last of the four basic forces known in nature (gravity, electromagnetism and, operating within the nucleus of the atom, the strong force and Fermi's "weak force"). He also co-invented and designed the first man-made nuclear reactor, starting it up in a historic secret experiment at the University of Chicago on Dec. 2, 1942.

He disliked complicated theories, and while he had great mathematical ability, he would never use it when the job could be done much more simply. He was famous for getting quick and accurate answers to problems which would stump other people. An instance of this was seen during the first atomic bomb test in New Mexico on July 16, 1945. As the blast wave reached him, Fermi dropped bits of paper. By measuring the distance they were blown, he could compare to a previously computed table and thus estimate the bomb energy yield. Later on, this method of getting approximate and quick answers through back of the envelope calculations became informally known as the 'Fermi method'.