Wikinventia — Atlas of discoveries and inventions · Industrial Age

First controlled nuclear reactor — Enrico Fermi

1942 AD · Transmission: Global
PhysicsMethodItalian

Enrico Fermi, born in Rome and exiled to the US after the 1938 Italian racial laws, leads the team that achieves the first self-sustaining, controlled nuclear chain reaction on 2 December 1942 in the Chicago Pile-1 (CP-1), a graphite-and-uranium reactor built beneath the stands of Chicago's Stagg Field stadium. The experiment is the founding milestone of the nuclear age and of all subsequent fission technology — both civilian (power reactors) and military (the atomic bomb). Fermi had received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938 for his work on artificial radioactivity induced by neutrons, using the trip to Stockholm as an opportunity not to return to Italy.

InstitutionUniversity of Chicago — Manhattan Project
Historical regionItaly (Rome) / United States (Chicago)
Primary sourceFermi, E. — "The Development of the First Chain Reaction Pile" (Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 1946); CP-1 report, Manhattan Project, 2 December 1942
Secondary sourceNobel Prize — Physics 1938 — Enrico Fermi; Britannica — Enrico Fermi
Original languageEnglish
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