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What was Enrico Fermi's contribution to the understanding of nuclear power?

Italian-born physicist (a scientist specializing in the interaction between matter and energy) Enrico Fermi (1901–1954) was instrumental in the development of the first nuclear weapons during the 1940s. He is now considered one of the "fathers" of the nuclear age. He worked as a physicist in Italy until the Fascist regime (a government that places nation and race above the individual) of Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) made it impossible to stay in his native country. Fermi moved to the United States in 1939 with his Jewish wife Laura, shortly after receiving the Nobel Prize in physics for his experiments with splitting atoms (1938).

Fermi taught physics at Columbia University (1939–45) and at the University of Chicago (1946–54). In 1942 he became one of the central figures in the Manhattan Project undertaken at...

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