Professor Michael Siefert: Lecture on Enrico Fermi, Physicist

Enrico Fermi was one of the most influential physicists of the 20th century. His contributions to the field of physics helped shape much of modern physics as it exists today; his work was instrumental in the development of statistical physics, quantum mechanics, nuclear physics, and particle physics. Almost uniquely among his colleagues, he was adept both in constructing models to understand the Universe and in conducting experiments to confirm or refute these models. One of his biographers called him “the last man who knew everything.”

In this talk, Prof. Seifert will trace Fermi’s life from his youth as a mathematical prodigy in Rome, through his influential research and receipt of the Nobel Prize in Physics, to his emigration to the United States and his pivotal work on the Manhattan Project. He will also discuss some of deep and fascinating ideas that Fermi discovered.

Michael Seifert was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He developed a love of deep physics in high school, going on to earn a bachelor’s degree in physics from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago. He subsequently worked at Indiana University, Eckerd College, and Williams College before joining Connecticut College in 2014. His research involves gravitational physics and particle physics, particularly as to how the properties of space and time influence physical phenomena via the socalled “Lorentz symmetry”. He lives in Quaker Hill, CT with his wife.