Classic physics

Enrico Fermi was one of the 20th century’s greatest physicists. Emilio Segre makes elegant sense of the man’s life and works in Enrico Fermi, Physicist (ISBN 0 226 74473 6), published appropriately enough by the University of Chicago Press – Fermi organised the first ever controlled nuclear chain reaction at Chicago in 1942. Now out in paperback, it costs £11.25/$13.95 to buy an essential piece of physics’ history.