Emilio Gino Segrè (1905 - 1989)

Born 1 Feb 1905 in Tivoli, Roma, Lazio, Italy

Died 22 Apr 1989 at age 84 in Lafayette, Contra Costa County, California

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Biography

Emilio Segrè is Notable.

Emilio was born in 1905, the son of Giuseppe Segrè, a businessman who owned a paper mill, and Amelia Susanna Treves. He was educated in Tivoli, and after the family moved to Rome in 1917, he continued his education there. He graduated in 1922 and enrolled in the University Rome La Sapienza as an engineering student.

In 1927 Emilio met Franco Rasetti, who introduced him to Enrico Fermi. Rasetti and Fermi were looking for talented students, and Emilio joined them at thier laboratory in Rome. Switching to physics, he received his laurea degree in July 1928, studying under Fermi.

He was appointed assistant professor of physics at the University of Rome in 1932, working there until 1936. In 1934 he met Elfriede Spiro, and they were married in 1936. Seeking a more stable position, he became professor of physics and director of the Physics Institute at the University of Palermo. Paying a visit to California in 1936, he met with Ernest O Lawrence and other physicists at the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory. By late 1938, with war rumbling in Europe, Emilio and his family emigrated to the United States. Lawrence offered him a job, and he remained at Berkeley until late 1942, when J Robert Oppenheimer invited him to join the Manhattan Project. While still at Los Alamos during the war, Segrè had been offered professorships at Washington University in St Louis, and the University of Chicago. He left Los Alamos in 1946 and returned to Berkeley, and except for a few years at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, spent the rest of his research career there.

He and Owen Chamberlain were jointly awarded the 1959 Nobel Prize for their discovery of the anitproton.

His wife Elfriede passed away in 1970, and Segrè married Rosa Mines in February 1972. While walking near his home, he suffered a heart attack and passed away in 1989.

Segrè took many photos documenting events and people in the history of modern science. After his death Rosa donated many of his photographs to the American Institute of Physics, which named its photographic archive of physics history in his honor.

Sources

• Wikipedia page [1]
• The Emilio Segrè Visual Archives at the American Institue of Physics [2]
• 1940 Federal Census lists Emilio Segrè, age 35, and wife Elfriede H, age 32, living in Berkeley, Alameda County, California. Children listed are Claudio, age 3. Inferred residence in 1935 is Rome, Italy
• Find a Grave, database and images [3]] : accessed 28 October 2021), memorial page for Emilio Gino Segre (1 Feb 1905–22 Apr 1989), Find A Grave: Memorial #104404987, citing Lafayette Cemetery, Lafayette, Contra Costa County, California, USA ; Maintained by Find a Grave.