Laura Fermi Quotes

, a first-year student of physics like Fermi, was not a usual person; his main interest was directed to that part of the world which is not made of human beings. ...
... He had organized a group of students among whom Fermi was prominent in an "Anti-Neighbors Society." The society's single aim was to pester people. The tricks they played ranged from placing a pan of water on a door left ajar which would give a shower to the first person going through, to exploding a in a classroom during a solemn lecture. For the latter prank Rasetti and Fermi, who had built the bomb, risked being expelled forever from the university. They were saved by their teacher of experimental physics, Professor , a tolerant man with keen judgment, who stressed their scholarly achievements at an especially convoked disciplinary meeting of the faculty.

... I reached the door and read the sign:
.
" ...." The name brought back the memory of a slim and swarthy young Sicilian leaning against the tall in my parents' backckyard, isolated and quiet among the numerous merrymakes at my wedding reception. It was the summer of 1928, and earlier that year Majorana had joined the small group of students being trained in "modern" physics by Enrico Fermi and Franco Rasetti. Fermi had told me marvels about him: he was a wizard at mathematical calculatons; in physics he was a genius, like Galilei and Newton. Nature had bestowed upon him exceptional intellectual gifts ... but not the power to cope with life. After a few years of association with the group, Majorana stopped going to the physics building; despite his outstanding work he isolated himself and eventually became almost a recluse. Then, after a dramatic return to the academic world and a few weeks of teaching at the , he mysteriously disappeared in 1938, forever, perhaps a suicide, or perhaps a hermit in the secrecy of some convent. Forgotten for many years, his name was now a beacon attracting to Erice the brilliant in science, the young as well as the old.