On Enrico Fermi

Enrico Fermi, a genius of physics, with a brilliant gaze, an affable expression, and a broad forehead. I believe we would have been good friends. Italian as he was, we would have spent the most delightful afternoons, eating pasta and drinking a nice little wine, playing chess and singing the best of Verdi.

I find it hard to understand how he, being as I believe he was, agreed to use his extraordinary intelligence and his knowledge of statistical mathematics applied to subatomic phenomena to help create something as terrible as the atomic bomb. Perhaps there is no justification. I do not know. It is difficult to judge the past, and even more so when one has already eradicated from one’s repertoire of bad habits the unhealthy habit of judging others. But I believe there are some circumstances here that are worth considering.

First, before the first explosion at Alamogordo, the real power of the atomic bomb was unknown, and it unfortunately turned out to exceed all expectations, even the most ambitious. Thus, ignorant of the destructive power he would unleash, Fermi had no precise measure of comparison with which to reflect on the consequences of his actions. When he had it, it was already too late, for the politicians and the military had taken control of the matter.

Second, it is said that in those days there was a pressing fear that the Nazis might build the bomb first. I do not know whether this was a real risk at that moment or an excuse invented by the Allies’ diplomatic historians to kick sand over the crap. Even if it were, merely thinking of the remote possibility that the Nazis might have exploded the atomic bomb before the Americans makes my blood run cold with dread. In that case, there would have been no limits of space or time to carrying their murderous racist policy to every corner of the Earth.

Third, Enrico Fermi had recently been persecuted by the Italian Fascists, and he carried in his breast, like every victim of political persecution, the bitter taste of repression, and the desire for vindication, which sometimes degenerates into a blind search for revenge.

I wonder what our attitude would have been had we been in his place. Perhaps any of us, had we been him, would have done the same. Perhaps not. Even today it is hard to know whether the present we are living as a consequence of the Americans’ conquest of nuclear power before anyone else was better or worse than the present we would have been living had they not been the first to conquer it. Perhaps without Fermi’s help, no one would ever have conquered it. But perhaps the Nazis would have. Who knows!

I regret not having known him personally. Then I would have asked him what he thought of war. Perhaps he would have joined our Movement for world peace and for the non-participation of men of science in wars. Perhaps he would have told us to go to hell.