Author: Antigone Marino

The editorial committee of EuroPhysics News (EPN) has finally returned to meeting in person, after a long hiatus due to the global Covid emergency. On 6th October, its annual meeting was hosted by the Enrico Fermi Research Center (CREF) in Rome, thanks to the CREF President Luciano Pietronero and Miriam Focaccia, Coordinator of the Enrico Fermi Museum. In 2012, Luisa Cifarelli as President of the European Physical Society, and CREF as well, proclaimed the goldfish fountain, located in the courtyard of the Institute, an EPS Historic Site.

The EPN committee had the pleasure to visit the museum dedicated to the Italian Nobel Prize winner Enrico Fermi. This was founded to preserve and disseminate the memory of the Italian scientist, defined as “the last man who knew everything” for his contributions to twentieth-century physics both as a theorist and as an experimentalist. The Museum itinerary was presented for the first time in 2015 at the Genoa Science Festival and installed permanently on the ground floor of the historic building of via Panisperna at the end of 2019. The building itself is an integral part of the museum itinerary. In the 1930s, this was the “Regio Istituto Fisico”, and Enrico Fermi and his collaborators conducted their experiments and research here. Eventually the discoveries on radioactivity induced by neutrons earned the scientist the Nobel Prize in 1938.

Combining traditional objects and panels with modern multimedia technologies, the installations allow visitors to retrace how the exploration of matter has intertwined with the historical events of the twentieth century. From beta decay to cosmic rays, from the first nuclear fission to the construction of the bomb in the Los Alamos laboratories, the story of the research begun by a group of ragazzi in via Panisperna can’t be separated from the events that changed the 20th century.

The meeting between the CREF staff and the EPN editorial board demonstrates once again how returning to meeting in person favours cultural exchange, contamination, and dissemination. Indispensable ingredients in scientific research.

More info

• CREF museum
• Fermi "goldfish" fountain as EPS Historic Site
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The EPN advisory board on the iconic staircase of the Enrico Fermi Research Center.
Last woman on the right, Miriam Focaccia, director of the E. Fermi Museum.
image credit: Antigone Marino