Enrico Fermi. Many different observers, from many different perspectives--friends, colleagues, historians of science comment about Enrico Fermi, that he was the last great physicist to be a great theoretician and a great experimentalist. As a theoretician he formulated a theory of beta decay, the process wherein positrons or electrons are emitted by an unstable nucleus undergoing radioactive decay, and contributed to the understanding of the neutrino long before it was ultimately observed. 

As an experimenter, he did much important work, but what stands alone occurred on December 2, 1942 in an old squash court (a doubles' squash court that measured 60 ft x 30 ft x 26 ft high; half of its height was below ground level) at Stagg Field, the University of Chicago.

The West Stands at Stagg Field, Chicago circa 1950 which contained the Squash court.
These were demolished in 1960 and replaced in 1967 by a 12 foot bronze Sculpture by Henry Moore entitled "Nuclear Energy" (seen below left).

There and then at 3.25 pm, Enrico Fermi started and guided the world's first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.  It took 28 minutes. It has been compared to the discovery of fire. Fermi's atomic pile was, in essence, the first nuclear reactor--the first unleashing and harnessing of the energy of the atom by humans with their own hands.

Command the Morning, by Pearl Buck

The price of progress: Fictional scientists Stephen Coast and Jane Earl work alongside the legendary Enrico Fermi to achieve the world's first self-sustaining nuclear reaction. Fermi calls for a toast, but Coast and Earl, sickened by knowledge of what they've unleashed, cannot touch their Chianti.

The bottom drawing is another view by an unknown artist

See also "A Sermon" Click here