At 14, he had mastered calculus and classical mechanics—teaching himself from a 19th-century Latin textbook. By 21, his doctoral examiners couldn’t understand his thesis. At 41, he built the first nuclear reactor and changed the world forever.
In 1915, a fourteen-year-old boy walked into a Roman bookstall and found a dusty Latin textbook titled Elementorum physicae mathematicae, written in 1840 by a Jesuit priest named Andrea Caraffa.
Most teenagers would have walked past it. This boy bought it, took it home, and taught himself physics.
His name was Enrico Fermi, and he was about to become one of the most brilliant minds in human history.
Enrico wasn’t born into wealth or academic privilege. His father worked for the Italian railroad. His mother was a schoolteacher. They were solidly middle-class, not elite.
But Enrico was different from the moment he could think.
By age ten, he was building electric motors for fun. By fourteen, he had mastered geometry, algebra, calculus, and classical mechanics—entirely on his own, using that Latin physics textbook and whatever math books he could find in used bookstores.
He didn’t have tutors. He didn’t have special programs. He just had an insatiable need to understand how the universe worked.
His older brother Giulio recognized Enrico’s genius and encouraged him. The two were inseparable—until Giulio died suddenly during a minor throat surgery when Enrico was just fourteen.
The loss devastated Enrico. He threw himself even deeper into physics, using science as both escape and purpose. The Latin textbook became his companion, his teacher, his way of keeping his mind occupied so grief couldn’t consume him.
By seventeen, Enrico was ready for university. But not just any university—he applied to Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Italy’s most elite and demanding institution.
The entrance exam lasted three days. Eight hours each day. Twenty-four hours of testing designed to break all but the most exceptional students.
Enrico’s final essay topic: “Describe the characteristics of sound.”
What he wrote wasn’t an essay. It was a doctoral-level dissertation on acoustics, wave mechanics, and partial differential equations—written by a seventeen-year-old who’d never taken a formal physics course.
The examiners read it in stunned silence. One later admitted they’d never seen anything like it. This wasn’t a talented student. This was something else entirely.
Enrico was admitted with the highest marks in the institution’s history.
And then—in perhaps the most Fermi moment ever—he was bored by his classes.
University courses moved too slowly. Professors taught things he’d already mastered years ago. So Enrico did what any genius would do: he stopped attending most lectures and taught himself instead.
He joined a group of friends in what they jokingly called the Società Antiprossimo—the “Anti-Near Society”—a playful dig at conventional society. They debated physics, told jokes, and challenged each other intellectually.
Fermi’s humor was as sharp as his mind. He was known for making complex physics problems into jokes, for explaining impossible concepts through simple analogies, for being simultaneously the smartest person in the room and the most fun to be around.
One of his professors—Corbino, a respected physicist—once admitted to Fermi: “If you explain it to me, I understand it.”
Think about that. A professor telling a twenty-year-old student that he needed the student to explain physics to him.
By age twenty, Fermi was publishing papers on quantum mechanics and statistical physics—topics so cutting-edge that most Italian physicists didn’t even recognize them as legitimate science yet.
Italy’s physics community was stuck in classical 19th-century thinking. Fermi was already living in the quantum future.
In 1922, at age twenty-one, Fermi defended his doctoral thesis on X-ray diffraction.
Eleven examiners sat in the room. Fermi presented his work—complex, groundbreaking, mathematically sophisticated research that pushed the boundaries of what was known about atomic physics.
When he finished, silence.
The examiners looked at each other. They looked at their notes. They looked back at Fermi.
They awarded him magna cum laude—the highest honors.
But nobody clapped. Nobody celebrated. They simply didn’t know how to measure what they’d just witnessed. It was like watching a student prove something so far beyond the curriculum that you can’t even grade it properly.
One examiner later said they weren’t sure if they were examining Fermi or if Fermi was examining them.
Fermi left Italy for Germany, studying with the greatest physicists in Europe—Max Born, Werner Heisenberg, Paul Dirac. But even among geniuses, Fermi stood out.
He returned to Italy and, by age twenty-six, was a full professor at the University of Rome, building Italy’s first serious modern physics program.
In the 1930s, Fermi pioneered work on neutron bombardment and nuclear reactions. He was unraveling the secrets of the atom—not theoretically, but experimentally, actually splitting atoms and measuring what happened.
In 1938, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
And then everything changed.
Mussolini’s fascist government had passed anti-Jewish laws. Fermi’s wife Laura was Jewish. Their children were in danger. Italy was no longer safe.
So when Fermi went to Stockholm to receive his Nobel Prize in December 1938, he didn’t return to Italy. He took his family and fled to America instead.
The United States gained one of the world’s greatest physicists. Italy lost him forever—a self-inflicted wound of fascism that crippled Italian science for generations.
In America, Fermi went to the University of Chicago and was recruited for the Manhattan Project—the secret program to build the atomic bomb.
On December 2, 1942, in a squash court beneath the University of Chicago’s football stadium, Enrico Fermi oversaw the activation of Chicago Pile-1—the world’s first nuclear reactor.
It was a stack of graphite blocks and uranium, built by hand, controlled by cadmium rods. If something went wrong, it could kill everyone in the building and irradiate half of Chicago.
Fermi stood calmly, making calculations with his slide rule, calling out instructions.
At 3:25 PM, the reactor went critical. For the first time in human history, a controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was achieved.
Fermi had split the atom and harnessed its power.
The atomic age had begun—for better and worse.
That moment changed everything. Nuclear power. Nuclear weapons. The Cold War. Modern physics. Energy policy. Global politics. All of it traces back to that squash court in Chicago and the boy from Rome who taught himself physics from a dusty Latin textbook.
Fermi never sought fame. He never promoted himself. He never played politics or chased headlines.
He just wanted to understand. And he wanted to build things that worked.
His colleagues called him “The Pope” because when Fermi spoke on physics, it was infallible. If Fermi said something was correct, it was correct. If Fermi said your calculation was wrong, you redid your calculation.
He died in 1954, at just fifty-three, from stomach cancer—likely caused by radiation exposure from his years of experimental work.
Element 100 on the periodic table is named Fermium in his honor. The Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory bears his name. His contributions to quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, nuclear physics, and particle physics shaped the entire foundation of modern physics.
But here’s what makes Fermi’s story so powerful:
He wasn’t born a genius in some magical way. He was born curious. He found a Latin textbook in a bookstall and decided to teach himself. He kept learning. He kept questioning. He kept building.
The boy who outgrew every teacher became the man who taught the world how to harness the atom.
At 14, he taught himself physics. At 21, his professors couldn’t understand him. At 41, he changed the world forever.

I am so very proud of contributing in a small way to your career as a scientist. Of seeing the awe in it all. I was mostly running around being silly.

That summer changed me, my parents noted that I seemed like a different person. Yes, I learned a lot of geology, and a lot of of those lessons have stuck with me… but there was more than that. I always knew I wanted to be a scientist- even when I was a toddler- there was no question in my mind about it. I wanted to experience the thrill of discovery, to reveal the unknown – but from watching my father and media I anticipated that to get that rare reward I would have to spend painful years grinding away at first learning and then researching and then- if I was lucky I would be rewarded with the joy of discovery… and then back to the grind to try and make another discovery.

THAT was my view of what working in the sciences was like- now that I think back on it, it is surprising that I felt so determined to go into the sciences. That was the way I viewed science when I came to that summer course in Colorado Springs as a fat nerdy teen.

I learned a lot from all the instructors- it was a VERY well done program. Euler H. was a mythological character of course, so I can’t help but remember him, but of all the instructors I only remember him and you in detail.

I learned a lot of field geology from you, identifying rocks an minerals, mapping strata etc… but most importantly I learned that the PROCESS of science can be fun and rewarding in and of itself. I learned that there is more enjoyment to be had than just the rare and brief ‘eureka’ moment … the process of getting to that moment- even if the desired discovery never actually happens- that process itself is actually most of the fun.

The research, the analysis the planning of how to attack the research, the collaboration, the brainstorming… THAT is actually most of the fun. Keep in mind, as I was growing up my only first hand knowledge of the scientific process was from watching my father- he was a theorist in solid state physics. What I witnessed was day after day of him working on calculations- quite literally AGONIZING over them at the dining room table almost constantly … very rarely he would have a breakthrough and he would have a few weeks of euphoria. That was ‘the scientific process’ as I understood it then. I had no concept of experimental science, he was a theorist and never worked in the lab.

That summer camp exposed me to a whole new side of science. The joy of observation, using your mind in real time to analyze details and deduce facts from those observations. I don’t think I had ever even conceived of doing experimental physics prior to that summer. Science in my mind was sitting at a table and writing calculations or writing computer code… that was all I had really seen first hand.

While the other instructors at the camp were good (even the asshole one whose name I can’t remember, he had a dog he brought with him on field trips) YOU were the one that truly showed us the FUN and excitement to be had in the process. The eureka moments are rare, but getting there is more than half the fun. No one made that clearer than you did. It opened up an entirely new side of the scientific process to me…

I learned that there can be joy in the act of observation, fun in the process of analyzing the data, the satisfaction in the organization of the data in a way it can lead to discovery, excitement in occasionally seeing Erica in a swimsuit…

I am sure that you had a similar impact on all the other students in that class and others over the years. I ended up becoming an experimentalist instead of a theorist like my father.

Beyond that, the confidence and independence I gained that summer was crucial in preparing me for the challenges to come.

So beyond YOUR actual research you had a real impact on others that also went on to do science in other areas. You certainly taught us that the process can be rewarding in itself. Your example certainly influenced us and quite likely led some to go into the sciences who might not have done so otherwise….

Though I believe Mark(?) ended up being somehow involved in the Enron scandal… but I doubt that there is any way you played a part in him going down that path… Mark was kinda a lost cause from the start.

I haven’t checked lately, but I don’t think it has ever been cited. I’ve only a handful of other published works, they have been cited, and that makes me proud that decades of research has in a small way contributed to a highly esoteric topic in geology – nodular sillimanite gneiss, AKA “podrock”.

About 1 out of 250 people have an IQ over 140 (depends on the methodology used to come up with an IQ score, the subject’s performance that particular day etc…)

Clearly, 1 out of 250 people do not revolutionize our understanding of the world… if that were the case, we would be in a very different world. I have known ‘geniuses’ that contributed nothing, or less than nothing to the world…

At a young age I realized my father, a tenured physics professor, was not very ‘intelligent’ compared to my mother. But in the era they grew up in, men went to college to get an education and career, women went to college to get a husband… so my mother’s greater IQ was ignored and my father- with her help- succeeded. It is unfair as hell, and she was FAR more intelligent, but her dreams were frustrated by misogyny and bullshit.

Even as a child I could recognize that my father was not ‘the brightest bulb in the room’… but he made up for it by working hard… pathologically hard… to make a difference, to do what he could to advance his chosen area of research… I personally think his accomplishments deserve respect- not because they were revolutionary like Einstein’s, but because he had to work so damn hard to do what he did… I suppose he had an IQ above average, but he always seemed frustratingly slow… but he would work all night with full concentration to advance his research- that deserves respect, likely more respect than given the geniuses that have gifted flashes of insight and make it look easy.

Feynman revolutionized physics, my father almost certainly had to work far harder to make a small contribution to solid state physics… an area of physics I hated, and never did well at.

Feynman rightly is famous, my father’s work is just a reference in other people’s papers… who deserves more respect? The person that revolutionized physics, or the person that sacrificed everything, eventually his sanity and- eventually- his life, to make the small difference he could…?

Its a judgement call I guess… The point is high IQ people can contribute nothing, and low IQ people can make a difference with hard work. Obviously MOST geniuses make little difference- one out of 250 people do not succeed in revolutionizing the understanding of the world… some go into finance and maybe make a lot of money- with a little luck… others work at Burger King and waste their talent asking if ‘You want fries with that?’

Never assume someone’s profession defines their IQ – I once had to take a cab in the Boston area and ended up with a driver who was highly trained in artificial intelligence and wanted to discuss its applications to physics.

We had a long conversation, and I hated having to end it because I had a meeting I had to get to…

Our society wastes genius- most grow up without access to the education they could use, others are strangled by being forced to live in zip-codes poisoned by poverty or chemical waste…

If we, as a society, prioritized ensuring EVERYONE could achieve their full potential- we would live in a far different world… instead we have this shithole we have to try to navigate.

It is not clear that the human mind is capable of ‘understanding’ QM. There are those people that are gifted and grasp the mathematics at a fundamental level, and some of them have insights into how it works and make incredible leaps in the theory… but QM, like some other areas of physics is a set of rules and implications FAR beyond what our primate brains evolved with. The best minds intimately know the mathematics and what its telling us- the rules of QM were not come up with by some brilliant guy having a flash of inspiration and suddenly understanding the true nature of reality. No, the entire scientific world was dragged into QM- with many people, including Einstein kicking and screaming about how at least some of the interpretations of what the math is telling us must be fundamentally flawed.

None of the greats denied that that the theory works- it is spectacularly good at explaining and predicting the results of experiment- as a tool it is as effective as it gets. It describes reality – it has implications that are so alien and counter-intuitive to our minds, but as weird as those implications are, they are undeniably true…

But what does it all MEAN? What does it say about the true nature of reality? Fuck if I know… No one knows for sure, plenty of people have ideas, and interpretations- most of which are unprovable. I am listening to a book on QM by Sean Caroll called ‘The many hidden worlds of Quantum Mechanics’- he is a proponent of the ‘Many Worlds’ interpretation of QM (an interpretation first espoused by Hugh Everett, a student of Wheeler’s by the way) . In this interpretation ALL quantum possibilities are equally real. Schroedinger’s cat doesn’t become alive or dead when you open the box, instead there is a multitude of universes where it alive and a multitude where its dead- all equally real, unable to be seen by the others, (making it terribly hard to falsify the supposition). It can, and has been, said that the Many Worlds interpretation is a FAR more ‘natural’ interpretation than the Copenhagen Convention that observation collapses the wavefunction. There really is no real mathematical justification for that interpretation- again, I am not an expert, but it was sort of just decreed that this was a comfortable way of sidestepping the philosophical questions we had no way of answering. (again, just my opinion informed by people that ARE experts)

Once we try to go beyond the math and try to understand the meaning we start to enter the realm of philosophy, not testable science. At least not testable yet.

Take the following analogy-
Imagine taking a sophisticated solar powered calculator back to the 1600′s and giving it to Newton… after a brief tutorial you show him that it can do complex calculations that would be almost impossible to do in that age. It can even do the calculus that he helped invent, it speeds up his research greatly, and every time he tries to catch it giving an incorrect answer he is forced to admit it is correct… it even gives him glimpses at complex math he has not even dreamed of… Everyone eventually has to admit that the calculator gives the correct answer- they eventually are simply forced to admit that it is correct, even if it gives answers that are counter to their own intuition. Wise scientists of the era would admit that there might be cases where it gives incorrect answers, but if that is the case then the calculations are so complicated or alien to them that they have no way to check it… yet.

None of the greatest minds of the age could possibly explain how the calculator works… the reality behind it, the microscopic circuits carrying electrons might as well be angels and demons for all they know. All they know is its a powerful tool that- as far as they are capable of testing it- is ALWAYS right.

Having the calculator greatly accelerates their understanding of physics, and MAYBE eventually they will use it to help develop the physics that explains how it works and build more like it… but by the 1700′s if a student asks ‘But how does this device do all these things? What is the reality inside the box?’ The teacher may say ‘at this point, there is no way to know- it just works, shut up and use it to get answers’.

In many ways that is where we are with QM- through decades of theory and experiment we have to accept it works astoundingly well, even when it reveals weird answers like entanglement, the uncertainty principle, tunnelling, etc… answers that are completely counter to our day to day experience, our intuition that has evolved over millions of years.

Maybe someday the use of QM will help reveal the underlying reality… and we will understand why the calculator gives the answers it does- what makes it work… but right now we are still in the ‘shut up and use it to calculate’ phase.

There was- and still is- much debate about how to interpret what the facts mean… I (I am NOT an expert at all in QM) and actual experts feel that the Copenhagen convention (the idea of observation causing the wavefunction to collapse) is a bullshit way of shutting up the debate, an idea shoehorned into the physics simply because its the least disturbing or alien of all the other mathematically viable interpretations. It is NOT a natural interpretation of what QM is saying, it raises more philosophical questions that are swept under the rug such as “WHAT exactly qualifies as an observer and an observation”, “Isn’t it equally valid to say that when the observation is made, what really happens is that the observer becomes entangled with what is being observed”, “In reality there is not a wavefunction for a single particle, isn’t it more correct to say there is a single wavefunction for the entire universe?”

I can’t say definitively that there is no God, but I am pretty damn certain that if there is, its nothing like the God described in the bible- in much the same way I don’t know what the correct interpretation of QM is, but I am pretty damn certain the Copenhagen convention with the collapse of the wavefunction isn’t close to reality.

But don’t take my word on this- I studied QM and did the math well enough to get through grad school- experts that have far more experience and insight have come to the same conclusion. They have all sorts of alternatives to the Copenhagen convention… but for now they just have personal philosophies- any interpretation consistent with the math and experimental data is just as good as any other until we find a way to prove or falsify them.

What we DO know is that as weird as QM is, it indicates an underlying reality that is far weirder- perhaps one the human mind cannot fully grasp.

Classical mechanics ‘makes sense’ to us because it operates on a scale we witness every day… it was good enough for primates living in this world to survive and flourish. Knowing that there were electrons and protons, or that these particles were also waves wouldn’t have done a damn to help our ancestors to not be eaten by a sabretooth tiger… so its actually pretty amazing our brains- pretty much unchanged over the past 20,000 years- have figured things out to this point… at what point will our brains simply be unable to grasp the tools we have discovered, let alone understand the reality of how they work?

Intelligence helps, so does hard work- and sometimes it also takes luck, or having some crazy quirk in the way you personally look at things. Education is critical, but it does NOT have to be a formal one- Faraday had little in the way of formal education… yet he laid the groundwork for much of the modern age… Technically, I am a high-school drop-out.

The most important thing I have learned is to find people smarter than you in a given area and try and absorb what they know. I learned a lot in my graduate courses, but it was WORKING with smarter people that really led me to understand things. The education just let me speak the same language so I could learn from them.

There is no reason to be bothered or regret, instead just feel the awe of knowing that the underlying nature of reality is currently so weird and awesome that countless billions of primates have not figured it out yet… but if we don’t kill ourselves off we might…or perhaps it will be a never-ending journey…but we have, after all, come quite a far way from rubbing sticks together to get fire.