The Scientist Who Never Got Credit for the Bomb

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  • Опубліковано 13 січ 2025

КОМЕНТАРІ • 532

  • @Newsthink
    @Newsthink  Рік тому +27

    *Who do you believe is the most underrated scientist in history?*
    CORRECTION: Marie Curie and Pierre Curie never bombarded atoms with alpha particles. These experiments were done by their daughter Irene and her husband, Frédéric-Joliot Curie.
    Try brilliant.org/Newsthink/ for FREE for 30 days, and the first 200 people will get 20% off their annual premium subscription

    • @NRClips3414
      @NRClips3414 Рік тому +1

      Albert Einstein

    • @michaelburggraf2822
      @michaelburggraf2822 Рік тому +1

      Max Born, Arnold Sommerfeld, P.A.M. Dirac, Wolfgang Pauli, H.Kammerling-Onnes, John Bardeen, Leon Cooper, J.W.Gibbs, Heinrich Lehmann, J.P.G. DeGennes, L.D.Landau, ... and so many more.
      Their work has more influence on our world today - even our life every day - than all philosophers and artists together.

    • @vicky26pen
      @vicky26pen Рік тому +1

      Issac Newton

    • @michaelburggraf2822
      @michaelburggraf2822 Рік тому +2

      Actually I think that Newton and Einstein are often the first names people associate with physics and science in general.

    • @daffidavit
      @daffidavit Рік тому +4

      Lisa Meitner and her nephew. Was his name Hahn? They were outside skiing for leisure when they decided to take a break. Lisa took out a pencil and a piece of paper she had in her pocket. She and her nephew made some calculations to determine how to split a nucleus. They discovered that the key was not to use fast neutrons, but to slow down the neutron so that they would stick to an already overly stuffed nucleus. This extra neutron was like the staw that broke the camel's back. It caused the nucleus to wobble like a water balloon being squeezed in the middle. Eventually, the overstuffed neutron would fly apart thereby releasing more neutrons. Lisa Meitner should get a lot more credit IMHO. I hope I'm correct in what I just stated.

  • @GH-oi2jf
    @GH-oi2jf Рік тому +231

    Fermi is as well-known as Oppenheimer to anyone who is interested in the history of science.

    • @pedrorequio5515
      @pedrorequio5515 Рік тому +43

      Probably more, his contributions to science far outpace Oppenheimer.

    • @almdrs
      @almdrs Рік тому +8

      For everybody else, fed by the mainstream media, it's the other guy.

    • @darthpirate10i
      @darthpirate10i Рік тому +7

      He's known more I'll say

    • @bmt65
      @bmt65 Рік тому +4

      didn't Oppenheimer get the Fermi award? fakenews this title

    • @karenandrews4224
      @karenandrews4224 Рік тому +2

      Fermi’s Paradox would like a word….😊

  • @venugopalkoka2888
    @venugopalkoka2888 Рік тому +21

    Fermi doesn’t need recognition from anybody. He was the ultimate Guru and acknowledged by all scientists as one of the greatest ever. They used to call him the the “pope” for a good reason.

  • @joytekb
    @joytekb Рік тому +245

    I actually learn about Fermi first as a kid not Openheimer and for me he was father of nuclear energy.

    • @frankfindout1505
      @frankfindout1505 Рік тому +9

      Exactly right

    • @haamulubechooka6908
      @haamulubechooka6908 Рік тому +6

      Same with me, I actually got to learn more of Oppenheimer when the movie was made

    • @juliomanalo7074
      @juliomanalo7074 Рік тому +13

      I was about to comment on the same thing. Enrico Fermi father of nuclear energy through fission.

    • @SuperAngelofglory
      @SuperAngelofglory Рік тому +2

      same

    • @pedzsan
      @pedzsan Рік тому

      Yea. Oppenheimer was not mentioned in any classes I ever took and I almost got a BS in Physics before I changed to E.E. Fermi was mentioned often. So… “credit for the atomic bomb” is not a scientific achievement. Its an engineering and management achievement. After 1903, everyone had what was needed “scientifically” to build a bomb.

  • @Dobie_ByTor
    @Dobie_ByTor Рік тому +18

    Fermi is a legend in nuclear physics! He discovered/invented the first controlled nuclear reactor. Oppy and HIS TEAM built the plutonium implosion fission weapon. Little Boy was built on Fermi’s work with Uranium in Chicago.

    • @guardsful
      @guardsful 5 місяців тому

      You make it sound like a great thing. It isn't. We are a heartbeat away from the end of the human race. Read "Nuclear War" by Anne Jacobsen and then tell me what a great man Fermi is.

    • @danielefabbro822
      @danielefabbro822 4 місяці тому

      ​@@guardsful Fermi was in the team who built the bomb.
      But he firstly was against such project.
      Fermi died for cancer a couple of years after the war.

  • @okman9684
    @okman9684 Рік тому +40

    Fermi well known in scientific community. Even a subatomic particle category is named after him called "Fermion"

    • @BitwiseMobile
      @BitwiseMobile Рік тому +2

      Which makes sense considering atomic energy is based on the strong force, and only fermions can exhibit the strong force. Most fermions do exhibit the strong force, except for leptons, but they are still involved with beta decay and the weak force. The weak force, specifically beta decay, are still important for nuclear energy, but for a chain reaction it doesn't have much bearing other than fallout and other residual effects after the blast. Either way, understanding of both is critical to understanding astrophysics and nuclear physics in general.

    • @okman9684
      @okman9684 Рік тому +1

      @@BitwiseMobile actually strong force is causes by the particle called Gluon which is a Boson and massless. Everything except that is correct

  • @Sam-qm1io
    @Sam-qm1io Рік тому +34

    Fermi certainly got his due. The premier physics research facility in the US (and arguably, the world) is called Fermilab...not Oppenheimer Lab.

    • @Sacrosanct5910
      @Sacrosanct5910 Рік тому +5

      He rly didn’t though… This man, truly, is the father of the atomic age
      Everyone know Einstein… how many even know Fermi beyond *Fermi’s Paradox ? If that?
      Simply do a search here on yt for any Fermi documentaries, versus the others. I’ve never understood why this is

    • @marcobelli6856
      @marcobelli6856 11 місяців тому +1

      @@Sacrosanct5910not on UA-cam maybe but in real life cultured people do know him. And if I have to be real Majorana was even smarter than him and is even more unknown

    • @danielefabbro822
      @danielefabbro822 4 місяці тому

      ​@@Sacrosanct5910 the fun fact is that Fermi developed such paradox during his period while working at the bomb.
      Seems he was in the Cafeteria togheter with the other scientists of the project and they was talking about extraterrestrial life and why they didn't yet contact us.
      Fermi came out with his famous paradox.

    • @danielefabbro822
      @danielefabbro822 4 місяці тому

      ​@@marcobelli6856 Ettore Majorana was the finest mind of that century. Even smarter than Einstein.
      When Eisenberg show him his data about nazi nuclear project, he answered that such things was "banal". Or basically, of a disarming simplicity.

    • @Sacrosanct5910
      @Sacrosanct5910 4 місяці тому

      @@marcobelli6856 I wouldn’t disagree, though you prove my point in admitted that Majorana is even LESS known, receiving less credit
      But I disagree about ‘cultured’ & proper representation of our reality, in books…
      I do not agree or believe that this Anglo-normativity which permeates Western consciousness, is some inevitable, organic conclusion; rather, I think it’s pretty evident that it’s a purposefully engineered narrative.
      Who then can deny the erasure of the Italian design & root of our modern mind? This.. is the wider point
      There are more relevant structures to be discovered, in the world of men, than just these basic components of our physical existence
      Those who offer up & celebrate the Einstein’s of our world, in place of the truth, do so because they understand this… they better understand such mechanisms of power - and seek to wield it

  • @douglasstrother6584
    @douglasstrother6584 Рік тому +54

    Fermi's most significant contributions to Phsyics was his work on quantum statistics, especially in the context of condensed matter. Fermi-Dirac statistics, the Fermi Level, etc. are key ideas in understanding the electronic structure of metals and semiconductors.

    • @Music--ng8cd
      @Music--ng8cd Рік тому +11

      My father was born in Chicago in 1930 and attended the University of Chicago to become a chemist. Fermi was one of his professors.

    • @topdog5252
      @topdog5252 Рік тому +2

      @@Music--ng8cdwow!

    • @baneverything5580
      @baneverything5580 Рік тому +3

      Well, he couldn`t have done it with Joe Biden...the great scientist to ever live. COME ON MAN!

    • @Music--ng8cd
      @Music--ng8cd Рік тому

      @@baneverything5580 You can't do anything without your daddy all up inside you

    • @douglasstrother6584
      @douglasstrother6584 Рік тому

      @@baneverything5580 LET'S DO SOME CALCULUS, JACK!!
      I thought "Obama Victories" were painful, then came "Biden Victories"!

  • @hypercomms2001
    @hypercomms2001 Рік тому +6

    Fermi’s major contribution to the Manhattan project was the development of the nuclear reactor, which was later able to produce kilogram quantities of plutonium.

  • @JohnHoranzy
    @JohnHoranzy Рік тому +15

    "Atoms in the Family: My Life with Enrico Fermi" written by Fermi's wife is a wonderfull biography.

    • @kurtgodel28
      @kurtgodel28 Рік тому

      I'd also recommend the biography "Enrico Fermi: Physicist" by Emilio Segrè, a long time friend of his and a Nobel laureate for physics.

  • @SuperAngelofglory
    @SuperAngelofglory Рік тому +44

    How was Fermi overlooked? Outside America, he is a lot more famous than Oppenheimer. In the Periodic Table of Elements, we have an element named after him (Fermium), but none named after Oppenheimer

    • @donsena2013
      @donsena2013 Рік тому +3

      Fermium : Atomic Number 100

    • @gregorypirog6134
      @gregorypirog6134 10 місяців тому

      Opium

    • @TheShadow0515
      @TheShadow0515 3 місяці тому

      Oppenheimium is too amusing to say in a serious context and keep a straight face while doing it.

  • @danielefabbro822
    @danielefabbro822 4 місяці тому +2

    Fun fact: Fermi worked in the Manhattan Project.
    Robert Oppenheimer was later awarded of his work on the bomb with the "Fermi Prize".

  • @godfreydaniel6278
    @godfreydaniel6278 Рік тому +23

    Fermi is VERY famous among those who are more knowledgeable on this topic than a movie marketing campaign. He was critical to the bomb-building project, but he wasn't the director of the project. Big difference...

    • @topdog5252
      @topdog5252 Рік тому +4

      I wish they focused slightly more on the scientists in the film. I was long enough but I was a little disappointed to only get a few quick clips of men like Feynman and nothing of von Neumann.

  • @SuperFredAZ
    @SuperFredAZ Рік тому +126

    Fermi was one of the greatest geniuses of all time, credit to Oppenheimer got coordinating all the geniuses.

    • @BonnieHaynes-gg4nk
      @BonnieHaynes-gg4nk Рік тому

      Amazing that theycould all work together in step when they were such independent thinkerd

    • @SuperFredAZ
      @SuperFredAZ Рік тому +3

      @@BonnieHaynes-gg4nk Agreed, nearly all geniuses, half a dozen Nobel laureates and future Nobel laureates

    • @ChristopherMyers
      @ChristopherMyers 9 місяців тому

      Oppie was also a genius...as a young physicist, I never realized this until I looked into his actual work and career prior to the bomb. I used to think like you, that was mostly a good coordinator...he was that as well, but, he was also at the top of the list in terms of geniuses of the world and history. He was also remarkably well-rounded in his knowledge of history, classics, liberal arts, literature, languages, etc....he wrote some of the best postmodern TS Eliot-ish poetry I have ever read. His background from upper class Jewish NYC at the turn of the century and connections with the Ethical Society, etc. are also important and interesting aspects of history that contributed to the depth of his genius

  • @SVSXXVW
    @SVSXXVW Рік тому +70

    "We're cooking" ...This man was indeed ahead of his time

  • @lemenyves34
    @lemenyves34 Рік тому +25

    Fermi is clearly significantly more famous than Oppenheimer as a physicist. Perceiving Oppenheimer as a more important physicist must be obvious U.S. unconscious bias. It remains that Oppenheimer indeed oversaw the fabrication of the bomb, and may thus legitimately be called the "father of the atomic bomb". His work in there was more of an engineer than of a physicist, but it does not follow that Oppenheimer would not be quite a remarkable figure of the time

    • @BitwiseMobile
      @BitwiseMobile Рік тому +2

      I wouldn't even go so far as to calling him an engineer. He was a coordinator. He was operating at the O level in that organization, and he probably didn't have much hands on anything at that point.

    • @danesovic7585
      @danesovic7585 Рік тому +3

      ​@@BitwiseMobileHe was an administrator, who never managed even a lemonade stand previously in his career. I still wonder why he was selected for the job, and not say Ernest Lawrence.

    • @lemenyves34
      @lemenyves34 Рік тому

      @@BitwiseMobile This is clearly an overstatement, however. Oppenheimer was a brilliant physicist, but not of the levels of the Fermi, Dirac, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, von Neumann, de Broglie, Bohr, etc..., and not either at the level of junior physicists like Feynman, Schwinger etc. He was however respected by all of these scholars, whom he knew, and would not be considered an 'operator' by any of them.

    • @Science-m9b
      @Science-m9b Рік тому +2

      Fermi is a whole class ahead of Oppenheimer (his work on quantum statistics alone dwarfs anything Oppenheimer did), but Oppenheimer did also very significant works such as the Born-Oppenheimer approximation which is very important in chemistry and molecular physics

  • @theoddduck3254
    @theoddduck3254 Рік тому +12

    I would argue that Fermi was way more well-known and important than Oppenheimer.

  • @rougesify
    @rougesify Рік тому +38

    The sad thing is that Italians invented:
    - the pile (Volta)
    - the telephone (Meucci)
    - the radio (Marconi)
    - nuclear fission (Fermi)
    - personal computer (Olivetti)
    But we hardly got anything out of it and any credit or real sustain or economic advance for that.
    Rather a lot Americans got the public perception credits for many of these inventions. They managed to manipulate perceptions and convince the average public opinion that overall these are all American inventions

    • @allanrinaldipaone9850
      @allanrinaldipaone9850 Рік тому

      Here! Here!

    • @qwertyman9560
      @qwertyman9560 Рік тому +4

      Sorry Marconi did not invent the radio, he essentially stole it.

    • @ascaniosobrero
      @ascaniosobrero Рік тому +11

      Even worse, US claims to have invented pizza!!! 🤣

    • @aku7598
      @aku7598 Рік тому +3

      American just do it. Others are thinking about it.

    • @yli97
      @yli97 Рік тому +8

      @@qwertyman9560 Bell stole the phone to Meucci

  • @sdedalus9269
    @sdedalus9269 Рік тому +26

    No...He was famous indeed!! We are talking about a giant here, the man that was also call "Pope Physicist. Winner of the nobel prize in 1938 for his work on induced radioactivity, inventor of the nuclear reactor, co discoverer of new radioactive elements, significant contributions in quantum physics statistical mechanics , nuclear and particles physics and more!!

  • @jimhim585
    @jimhim585 Рік тому +9

    Fermi and Von Neumann were critical to the Manhattan Project and legitimate geniuses.

  • @larscp
    @larscp Рік тому +7

    Yes, Oppenheimer did not invent the bomb, but was responsible for
    coordinating the creation of the bomb, with many physicists. He did that well

  • @docnelson2008
    @docnelson2008 Рік тому +8

    Those of us who studied physics at university are fully aware of the genius and importance of Enrico Fermi -it's good to be reminded just how great and versatile a physicist he really was- but the fact remains that other great scientists in the Los Alamos team also made important and essential contributions to the development of the bomb. Fermi had a steely determination and stubbornness that could sometimes upset others; he could certainly be difficult if he thought he was in the right; however he could be forgiven for having a "dark side" given the pressure they were all under. A interesting upload-thank you.

  • @georgegrubbs2966
    @georgegrubbs2966 Рік тому +6

    Fermi did not build the bomb, period. He made the essential breakthrough that enabled the building of the bomb.

  • @99bits46
    @99bits46 Рік тому +9

    Fermi was the only scientist after Isaac Newton and Maxwell who was both an expert experimentalist and theoretical physicist.

  • @dovbarleib3256
    @dovbarleib3256 Рік тому +2

    Who said that Enrico Fermi was not "as famous" as J Robert Oppenheimer?
    But he was not credited with making a bomb because he and Szilard made a working nuclear reactor, not a bomb. So he established the exothermic process of nuclear fission and obtained energy from it.... without making the ignition process of creating an explosive device of mass destruction.

  • @patricktully1874
    @patricktully1874 Рік тому +25

    There were many men over a 50 year period who were responsible for the bomb and splitting of the atom not just one man

    • @pashapasovski5860
      @pashapasovski5860 Рік тому

      Neil Bor,Salazar

    • @jeffmilroy9345
      @jeffmilroy9345 Рік тому

      Yeaaaaaa.......not. it is said enough monkeys randomly typing can eventually create a work of Shakespeare.

    • @bruce_c_in_nz
      @bruce_c_in_nz Рік тому

      @@retiredbore378 Marie Curie

    • @bruce_c_in_nz
      @bruce_c_in_nz Рік тому +1

      Ernest Rutherford was a prolific contributor, especially on the practical side

    • @jeffmilroy9345
      @jeffmilroy9345 Рік тому

      Sure, I estimate news agency folks are at least 99% similar dna. Throw in orangutans and the like and a lot of potential "votes" there. Eventually scientists will figure out how to clone democrats but it's really unnecessary as made so evident in the last election. You only need one Truman to "get er done". @@retiredbore378

  • @TheTigers00001
    @TheTigers00001 Рік тому +43

    It is quite unbelievable the talent that the Manhattan Project had at its disposal. Arguably the greatest minds ever to have been assembled at the one place at the one time. Fermi, von Neumann, Feynman, Teller, Ulam, Bohr, Chadwick, Oppenheimer etc. I doubt we will ever see so many geniuses working on a project again.

    • @BonnieHaynes-gg4nk
      @BonnieHaynes-gg4nk Рік тому +7

      Leo Szilard

    • @TheTigers00001
      @TheTigers00001 Рік тому +2

      @@BonnieHaynes-gg4nk Yes. Yet another genius. They all seemed to compliment each other's strengths and weaknesses!

    • @michaelburggraf2822
      @michaelburggraf2822 Рік тому +7

      Hans Bethe, Victor Weisskopf

    • @BonnieHaynes-gg4nk
      @BonnieHaynes-gg4nk Рік тому +3

      Leo Szilard.

    • @BonnieHaynes-gg4nk
      @BonnieHaynes-gg4nk Рік тому +2

      The person I would most like to interview is Gen Groves. Could you possibly imagine putting the smartest scientists in the world,
      In the equivalent of a .
      Combat Team. And making it work.

  • @tedn6855
    @tedn6855 Рік тому +34

    I always thought fermi was the main scientist while Oppenheimer was more of a project manager.

    • @ji5340
      @ji5340 Рік тому +2

      I would agree

    • @Themarch001
      @Themarch001 10 місяців тому +1

      Well that's false, both of them contributed a lot to the actual development. Oppenheimer too.

  • @carolann3249
    @carolann3249 Рік тому +3

    Without him , no stable bomb . Glad he made money from his patents . We need a movie on Fermi

  • @immanueljebaraj4001
    @immanueljebaraj4001 Рік тому +11

    Actually, if you learn physics - Fermi is a far more important and named figure than Oppenheimer who was mostly a man-manager and politician.

  • @EddySunMusicProbe
    @EddySunMusicProbe Рік тому +5

    Fermi was interested in the pacific use of Uranium, but he had to collaborate with the Manhattan project for many reasons. He was indeed the guy who found the path to the chain reaction. Without his research nothing could have been achieved.

  • @Phar2Rekliss
    @Phar2Rekliss Рік тому +14

    Thats why theres a Fermi lab and not an Oppenheimer lab

  • @flamurtarinegjakyt3745
    @flamurtarinegjakyt3745 Рік тому +9

    I actually knew more Fermi than Oppenheimer before the film

  • @j.dunlop8295
    @j.dunlop8295 10 місяців тому +1

    He was present when the X-10 Graphite Reactor went critical at Oak Ridge and witnessed the Trinity test in the New Mexico desert. After the war, Fermi became a professor at the University of Chicago, dying of stomach cancer in 1954.

    • @j.dunlop8295
      @j.dunlop8295 10 місяців тому

      Definitely a possibility radiation caused his cancer! Wonder how radioactive his body was? ☢️☢️

  • @johnd9031
    @johnd9031 Рік тому +9

    They were all geniuses on the Manhattan Project.

    • @gaborszegedy1673
      @gaborszegedy1673 11 місяців тому

      There were three Hungarians involved as well.

  • @P-G-77
    @P-G-77 7 місяців тому +1

    This is absolutely true... thanks for this clarification...

  • @federicosalvetti7703
    @federicosalvetti7703 Рік тому +3

    Nolan writing the movie: I will deliberately avoid to mention this man achievements.

  • @darjuz96
    @darjuz96 Рік тому +1

    4:55 "hitler pressed Mussolini to target Italian Jew", is not exactly true. Mussolini had ever at least since the 20s a quite anti-Semitic, but it not a systematic anti-semitism, so it means that for jews where are a possibility to live in Italy and join to PNF but they will be treated like a second-class citizens, or the fact that they was a Jew was a negative (but not exclusionary) factor on choice to be appointed at the role of responsibility in the state and/or party administration. But slowly, the anti semitism become more systematic, that leads to the racial laws, and with the war and after the 1943 armistice in the Italian Social Republic an active persecution of lives of Italian Jews.

  • @chancerobinson5112
    @chancerobinson5112 Рік тому +14

    Justly deserved tribute. Nice! “You can tune a piano but, you can’t tune a fish!” 😂☮️

  • @MrOdrzut
    @MrOdrzut Рік тому +4

    Fermi, Teller, Ulam. Lots of overlooked scientists worked on this.

  • @randyscorner9434
    @randyscorner9434 Рік тому +10

    Fermi, Leo Szilard, Feyman, Oppenheimer and many, many more. This was the largest group of extremely talented genius in history. No one should be credited with the development although the absence of any one of them might have caused the effort to fail. In this sense Fermi was essential to the effort, but that is true of so many others.

    • @lucialamprey2690
      @lucialamprey2690 Рік тому +1

      Don't forget Kistiakowsky, Pauli, Bethe, and Rabi, among others.

    • @danesovic7585
      @danesovic7585 Рік тому +4

      With respect, Fermi is a few notches above all the rest.

    • @CephlonMayngrum
      @CephlonMayngrum Рік тому +1

      No. The most talented gathering of geniuses happened in the late 80s in Staton Island

    • @mobilart4948
      @mobilart4948 Рік тому +1

      die ganze Forschung ist zuvor in Deutschland erfolgt von den weltbesten Physikern der damaligen Zeit
      Warum wird das alles nicht erwähnt, die Geschichte wird damit verdreht

  • @bearcb
    @bearcb Рік тому +12

    The last physicist to excel in both theory and experiment.

    • @PhilMoskowitz
      @PhilMoskowitz Рік тому +3

      That's because after Fermi, experimental physics were about teams, not individuals. Though I guess in the aftermath people have misconstrued Oppenheimer as one of those individual experimental physicists.

    • @michaelburggraf2822
      @michaelburggraf2822 Рік тому

      I'm not so sure about that. There have been a number of remarkable scientists in the fields of solid state physics, lasers and spectroscopy who were involved in both, theory and experiments. Take as an example the confirmation of Bose-Einstein condesates by Ketterle, or the quantum Hall effect by von Klitzing.
      Probably, today, technology used in modern experiments is on such an advanced level that special engineers are needed to support experiments such as the ones at CERN and Fermilab.

  • @lawrencestark4356
    @lawrencestark4356 Рік тому +3

    Other comments probably have made this point, but Oppenheimer did not "oversee the Manhattan project". He was responsible for managing the work at Los Alamos where scientists and engineers designed and built the actual bomb using . The director of the Manhattan Project was General Leslie Groves.

  • @topdog5252
    @topdog5252 Рік тому +7

    Dirac is truly someone who does not get credit they deserve. What he did was amazing. Feynman’s hero as a young man was Dirac.

  • @davidpeterson5186
    @davidpeterson5186 Рік тому +6

    At the Argonne Nation Lab they have the original notebook and signed bottle on display.

  • @byte1964
    @byte1964 Рік тому +7

    Just buy “The last man who knew everything” and you will find out that Fermi wasn’t underrated EVER.

  • @josephlevine3045
    @josephlevine3045 Рік тому +6

    He's far far far more famous than Oppenheimer to anyone with an education in physics.

  • @Eric-zo8wo
    @Eric-zo8wo Рік тому

    0:00: 💣 Enrico Fermi's experiments and his interest in probability theory led to the creation of the atomic bomb.
    2:40: 🔬 Enrico Fermi's contributions to physics include the development of Fermi-Dirac statistics, his explanation of beta decay, and his discovery of nuclear fission.
    5:40: 💣 The race to understand and control nuclear fission, leading to the development of the atomic bomb.
    8:16: 🔬 Fermi's pivotal role in creating the controlled release of nuclear energy and his contributions to the Manhattan Project.
    11:04: 💣 Enrico Fermi, the father of the atomic bomb, made significant contributions to physics and faced moral dilemmas regarding the development of more powerful weapons. He also pondered the Fermi Paradox and battled stomach cancer before his death at the age of 53.
    14:07: 🔑 Tech companies use Fermi problems in job interviews to assess problem-solving skills. Brilliant offers courses to cultivate analytical thinking.
    Recap by Tammy AI

  • @rondunn4336
    @rondunn4336 Рік тому +4

    The bomb inventors saved millions of lives both Allied and Japanese. Count the cost on both sides if an invasion had taken place. I wish the idealists who condemn, would allow reality into their thinking?

    • @douglasstrother6584
      @douglasstrother6584 Рік тому +2

      It could have been a gigantic version of the battle for Saipan.
      Unimaginable carnage.

  • @mrki731
    @mrki731 Рік тому +2

    Best freaking channel ever!!! I am so addicted to it and easy to follow knowledge!

  • @meirgriniasty7139
    @meirgriniasty7139 Рік тому +6

    maybe overlooked by the general community, but in the physics community fermi is a hero.
    one of the greatest. oppenheimer is not.

  • @MeAndMyRoyalEnfield
    @MeAndMyRoyalEnfield Рік тому +8

    Another good one. I would love to see a video outlining how you make a video,. From how you pick a topic, what areas you focus on within that topic, and how you find and select certain photos and videos to include. I would say Briilant has made you brilliant but I believe there was another cause for your brilliance. I bet you have amazing parents. That would make a good video topic to see how you were nurtured and guided to become who you are today. Tell them thank you, for raising you to be someone who so many people like me have come to rely on for educating us in such an entertaining way.

  • @drhennessy1848
    @drhennessy1848 Рік тому +34

    I always cry when i watch anything related to science. The missed opportunity to pursue physics still haunts me.

    • @ivanleon6164
      @ivanleon6164 Рік тому +3

      :(, at least you can still enjoy learning about it :). Im a physicist but i didnt made science, i ended working as software engineer and i also enjoy that, there is always things to enjoy.

    • @godfreydaniel6278
      @godfreydaniel6278 Рік тому +4

      It's never too late to seek knowledge...

    • @donteto
      @donteto Рік тому

      ​@@godfreydaniel6278while true, it will also never become your priority when you are past a certain point in life. I've been trying to relearn to play piano for almost two years already but cannot due to family, professional and house work.

  • @johnjones5354
    @johnjones5354 Рік тому +3

    I know much more about Fermi than I do Oppenheimer, but then again I worked at the Enrico Fermi power plant for 30+ years.😁

  • @jmguevarajordan
    @jmguevarajordan Рік тому +15

    There is no point of comparison between Fermi and Oppenheimer. Fermi was a first rate physicist and he was able to complete his work in physics. Oppenheimer is different, he directed the construction of the atomic bomb which was used without his approval against japan. After that he was involved in politicals turmoils and his career as a physicist was gonne for ever. Everybody recognize Fermi's work in physics (he is in the pages of any physics textbook) . Oppenheimer is different, he was named the 'father of the atomic bomb', which kills thousands of people, and he is accused of spying for the soviets. Oppenheimer is a 'villain', but to me he is truly a victim.

    • @PhilMoskowitz
      @PhilMoskowitz Рік тому +2

      No one needed Oppenheimer's "approval".

    • @jmguevarajordan
      @jmguevarajordan Рік тому

      @@PhilMoskowitz yes, you are correct, history tell us that.

    • @danesovic7585
      @danesovic7585 Рік тому

      Well, he did spy for Soviets, as did his brother and his wife. Alongside the fact that he had zero administrative experience prior to the Manhattan project, it's a miracle and a headscratcher why Groves chose him to lead it to begin with.

    • @jmguevarajordan
      @jmguevarajordan Рік тому

      @@danesovic7585 History says that his wife and brother were communist, but the hearings or investigations couldn't prove that he was a spy for the soviets.
      Grove selected Oppenheimer as a director or manager of the Manhattan project because he was the 'best': he knew the physics, he was well networked in the scientific community, he had strong communications skills, he was a hard worker and the Soviets were allies in WW2.

    • @danesovic7585
      @danesovic7585 Рік тому

      @@jmguevarajordan Someone with that kind of connections is a red flag already. Manhattan project was peppered with spies, clearly selection process was flawed, even if it wasn't conclusively proven in the case of Oppenheimer.
      And no, he had zero experience in running any kind of research lab or doing real physics. There were people like Ernest Lawrence who was a Nobel prize winner and created two major national physics laboratories.

  • @sliderule5891
    @sliderule5891 7 місяців тому

    This is an excellent mini-documentary on Fermi’s scientific contributions to the Manhattan Project. I often wondered if Fermi had lived another 20 years, what he would have discovered. Fermi was exposed to a lot of radiation including neutrons in his work. Fermi concentrated on Pu production at Hanford. A great book on his life is The Uranium People by Leona Libby Marshall who lived with Fermi and wife before she got married. I spent 38 years working at the Department of Energy’s nuclear facilities in Oak Ridge, TN, the first Manhattan Project site. Fermi and Arthur Compton came to the Clinton Engineer Works for the start up of the X-10 graphite pile which made the first gram quantity’s of Pu. Congratulations on a fine documentary.

  • @AliHassan-hb1bn
    @AliHassan-hb1bn Рік тому +3

    Fermi is known for his peaceful use of nuclear energy as well as his sub nuclear particle as Neutrino.

  • @Niaaal
    @Niaaal Рік тому +6

    Fermi was Steve Wozniak and Oppenheimer Steve Jobs

  • @JourneyOfTheTruth
    @JourneyOfTheTruth Рік тому +2

    I did credit him in my video about Nuclear warheads and it's history and their impact on humanity as Enrico Fermi and Glenn Seaborg were responsible for the production of plutonium in Manhattan project, but unfortunately I did not talk about how he's the man who started the race to expand the periodic table and how he's also the first man to design and build a nuclear reactor.

  • @SB_AE
    @SB_AE Рік тому +6

    Love your videos! Keep it up!

  • @dougball328
    @dougball328 Рік тому +1

    This entire comment stream is entertaining as well as perplexing. Those who think that Fermi was overlooked obviously never studied science in a serious fashion. And to debate who was more (or the most) critical to the development of the bomb is pointless. How far back in physics history do you want to go? Why not include the Curies? It's a chain - remove any one link and it doesn't work. Bethe even said in an interview later in life that Oppenheimer possessed the quickest mind he had ever seen. And while Oppy was important in getting the project together, I don't think that makes him more or less important than others.

  • @Schlipperschlopper
    @Schlipperschlopper Рік тому +2

    After the first successful American nuclear tests and bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, Stalin felt the need to act and urged Soviet scientists to develop an atomic bomb as well. But the project stalled. When a Chinese delegation visited Moscow in July 1949, Stalin showed them a film allegedly depicting the first Soviet nuclear test a few weeks before it took place. But where did this film come from? Where did the test take place?
    "Atomic Film"
    Delays in creating the bomb disrupted Stalin's foreign policy plans. A few months earlier, Stalin had received from his personal envoy to Mao Zedong, Ivan Kovalev, that the Chinese communists had discovered a secret American plan at Chiang Kai-shei headquarters. Accordingly, the Americans were preparing for World War III. Together with the national Chinese and Japanese, they intend to use atomic bombs to crush the People's Liberation Army of China. Stalin made it clear to Kovalev that the United States was not yet ready for a great war.
    On July 9, the first reception of the Chinese delegation led by the second highest party figure Liu Shaochi was held at Stalin's dacha. The second conversation, which is of particular interest to us, began on the evening of July 11 in the Kremlin. Liu Shaochi asked Stalin if he wanted to help the People's Liberation Army land in Taiwan. Stalin denied it. Liu then raised the question of how great Stalin considered the danger of World War III. The dictator acted calmly. The “imperialists” are not yet sufficiently armed to resist the Soviet Union at any moment.
    Liu then asked permission to visit Soviet nuclear laboratories. This request was no doubt agreed with Mao, who was familiar with and interested in nuclear weapons. Mao kept his intentions secret from the public, calling the atomic bombs "paper tigers". However, Stalin did not want to show the guests the nuclear laboratories and instead invited them to watch the film. An atomic bomb exploded. The tests, as Stalin Liu said, took place in the far north of the Soviet Union, in a deserted area near the Arctic Circle.
    Strangely enough, the screening of the film took place a few weeks before August 29, 1949, the first successful Soviet atomic bomb test in Semipalatinsk. Two key actors independently confirmed the fact of the film: Kovalev, Stalin's expert on China, reported it in his memoirs, as did Shi Zhe, Mao's translator.
    What drove Stalin to this bluff? His attempt to oust the Western Powers from West Berlin failed. Worse, the Berlin crisis contributed to the merger of many Western European countries and the United States into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in April 1949. America's nuclear arsenal, though small, was growing, and the Soviet Union did not yet have an atomic bomb. In Europe, Stalin was on the defensive. His attention, therefore, more than ever, was focused on Asia, where the centre of the world’s revolutionary movement had moved. Despite some reservations about Mao, Stalin saw the Chinese Communists as strategic allies. It must therefore be important for him to look as strong as possible. Nothing could illustrate this better than possessing an atomic bomb.
    German film?
    My guess is going in a different direction. Perhaps the film was found somewhere in Germany after the end of the war. What at first sounds like a wild conspiracy thesis is confirmed by documents I found in the inventory of sources of the archive of modern Russian history in Moscow, which lists hundreds of files of German mining. In addition to the files, films were also recorded. Most of them were rocket launches. The contents of one roll of film are described as follows: "The film about the launch of Fau-2 and the detonation of an atomic bomb". This designation of the name appears to have been literally translated from the German film into Russian.
    The film was handed over to the vice-chairman of the Special Committee on Missile Construction (Committee No. 2) Ivan Grigorievich Zubovich in May 1946. There is no way to prove whether these are indeed recordings of a nuclear fission bomb test. They are more likely to test a hybrid bomb consisting of a large amount of explosives and a small amount of fissionable and thermonuclear material. Only the original films or other archival materials that have not yet been discovered can provide information about this.

  • @senzosanjuro1769
    @senzosanjuro1769 Рік тому +45

    This guy was a genius, they could not have been succesfully made this bomb in time without him 👌

    • @selwynr
      @selwynr Рік тому

      And murdered people for US global dominance. Nice. Seems you approve.

    • @Music--ng8cd
      @Music--ng8cd Рік тому +2

      Or $2.2 Billion

    • @FontaineLovers
      @FontaineLovers Рік тому

      even without Oppenheimer or fermi humanity will always find a way to create the bomb as long as the foundation and theory for it exist so does the people who desire it the US was lucky for prioritizing the research on it and have it first if not the Soviet or German might have build it decades later

    • @antun88
      @antun88 Рік тому +3

      ​@@Music--ng8cd that's not something to celebrate or be proud of, but fine

    • @Music--ng8cd
      @Music--ng8cd Рік тому

      @@antun88 Neither is your comment

  • @tronconesgym
    @tronconesgym Рік тому +1

    Leo Szilard and Fermi imagined-made/built the reactor in Chicago respectively. Then Fermi went on from there and literally built the reactor with his own hands, stacking the graphite blocks with the help of football players. Szilard never got his hands dirty. Szilard was on the outside looking in after the team in White Sands built the Trinity bomb.

  • @susilgunaratne4267
    @susilgunaratne4267 Рік тому +1

    There shouldn't be any confusion about Fermi/Oppenheimer over the utilizing of atomic energy.
    Fermi did the FIRST pioneering experiments to show the practicality of what other famous Theoretical Scientists such as Einstein & he himself, Oppenheimer had been found out.
    Oppenheimer was THE father of the large scale development of the world famous atomic bomb that we all of know.

  • @gsmollin2
    @gsmollin2 Рік тому +1

    Fermi's name comes up all the time in atomic/nuclear/solid-state physics. Oppenheimer, not so much. Oppenheimer's contribution was as principal investigator of the Manhatten Project.

  • @ugorossi6223unico
    @ugorossi6223unico Рік тому +1

    When something about Ettore Maiorana? And the kids from via Panisperna?

  • @thomasciarlariello
    @thomasciarlariello Рік тому +1

    Oppenheimer's insistence on radiological weapons is why he was chosen to be a test engineer at Trintiy.

  • @MenamPatir4912
    @MenamPatir4912 2 місяці тому

    Sir Enrico fermi one of very few physicist who excelled in both theoritical and experimental physics. A great scientist,legend, you are my inspiration sir after Sir Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Leonhard Euler& Sir Carl Friedrich Gauss🙏.

  • @claussaunte2303
    @claussaunte2303 Рік тому +1

    Why not give credit to Lise Meitner, who made the theoretical groundwork for the atomic bomb, even in the new film about Oppenheimer she is not mentioned, allthough without her work the Manhattan projekt would have been in the Dark about the process. Hahn stole her work and Got the Nobel prize, a prize that rightfully should have gone to Lise.

  • @Joseph-fw6xx
    @Joseph-fw6xx Рік тому +1

    Fermi was a brilliant physicist to bad today he's only known by the Fermi paradox to most people

  • @damienmurray3928
    @damienmurray3928 6 місяців тому

    Leo Szilard who discovered and patented the means to produce a nuclear chain reaction played the most critical part in developing nuclear power production including nuclear weapons.

  • @emmanuelperry569
    @emmanuelperry569 Рік тому +1

    It is very interesting that nobody mentions the great Scientist Lise Meitner who was the first to comprehend what happens during fission , the phenomenon which took us to the construction of the so called Atomic Bomb

    • @craigwall9536
      @craigwall9536 Рік тому

      Meitner is my special hero scientist, but she wouldn't have snapped to the fission mechanism without Bohr's "liquid drop" model of the nucleus and the concept of nuclear "surface tension".
      In turn, Bohr knew about surface tension from his doctoral work describing those forces, work inspired while he watched his own urine stream while camping in Norway as a child and wondering about the behavior of the "braided stream".
      So the atomic bomb came about because Bohr's mind wandered while he was looking at his dick.
      Go figure.😅

    • @mohammadfardinchowdhury177
      @mohammadfardinchowdhury177 8 місяців тому

      leo szilard was the first one who figured out that large amount of energy can be released splitting the nucleus of an atom before ottohan.he was the first one to figure out the theoratical framework of fission in 1933.but as he wasnt famous at that time so his works werent much looked at that time.meitners works were unfamiliar to most of manhattan scientists.

  • @KevinS47
    @KevinS47 6 місяців тому

    Fermi, on top of all the pioneering he did in Theoretical Physics, was the founder of Nuclear Power and built the first ever Nuclear Reactor. On top of that, his huge contributions to understanding Fission, were the primary tool for building the atomic bomb. So while Oppenheimer took all credit in that hideous movie, it was actually Fermi that did most the work.
    He deserves SO MUCH more recognition... he also pioneered many many more fields within Physics, not just Nuclear Physics, which just adds to his genius.

  • @musonobari2560
    @musonobari2560 Рік тому +12

    The Fermi paradox isn't a paradox at all, if you consider the known Universe's size & Humanity's age, closely. When you are talking about millions of light years in distances, it's no wonder no extra terrestrial life has ever contacted us.
    Millions of alien civilizations might have developed & gone extinct in a .million different star systems, millions of light years away & ago, without ever getting the chance to look for fellow naighbors in the cosmos!
    Couple that with the mere 200,000 years or so that Homo Sapiens have roamed the earth, a blink of an eye in the cosmic time scale, one can logically conclude that we haven't been here long enough to find our fellow cosmic dwellers!
    The distances are just too f*****g crazy! 😰

    • @Papi_21
      @Papi_21 Рік тому +3

      Absolutely.

    • @nwaneri0
      @nwaneri0 Рік тому +1

      Instead of asking why an alien species has not visited Earth (which is indeterminate), we should rather come up with reasons for other species to visit Earth at all, frankly.
      There is a vast number of potential scenarios that goes beyond our current understanding of nature. We are designed as such to never exhaustively understand natural phenomena. We can only see a small spectrum of light. We can only hear a small range of sound waves and frequencies. The amount of information we can process at any given time is limited.
      These aliens could embody a species so different from us beyond those limitations of what to us carbon-based-life-forms is nature, that there is such a minor probability we could recognize them.

    • @jonahjohnsen6519
      @jonahjohnsen6519 Рік тому

      Known universe is as far as we can see.
      Outside that distance we don't know.

    • @mikesheth5370
      @mikesheth5370 Рік тому

      That proves there are billions of suns with habitable planets , there was low probability of evolving intelligent lives!

    • @markmiller8903
      @markmiller8903 Рік тому +1

      The universe has dust particles which make long distance travel impossible. If a ufo traveling at speed of light hit a dust particle it would be like an atom bomb going off. It would have to go very slow to be able to detect and steer around every dust particle.

  • @gsilcoful
    @gsilcoful Рік тому +2

    Thank you.

  • @gandalfgreyhame3425
    @gandalfgreyhame3425 Рік тому +1

    Eh, of all the different types of cancer, stomach cancer probably has less connection to radiation than many others, such as thyroid cancer, leukemia, lymphoma. etc. The current thinking is that chronic infection of the stomach by H. pylori, a bacteria, is the main cause of stomach ulcer, and chronic H.pylori infection is what eventually leads to stomach cancer.

  • @LoanwordEggcorn
    @LoanwordEggcorn Рік тому

    Excellent video on an interesting topic about an interesting person. Thanks!

  • @giorgiobarchiesi5003
    @giorgiobarchiesi5003 6 місяців тому

    I quote from the video, 9:06: “He was responsible for developing a means for the CONTROLLED release of nuclear energy”. That’s not the bomb, actually.

  • @TheCabrio1998
    @TheCabrio1998 5 місяців тому

    Your videos are excellent!

  • @burtonsankeralli5445
    @burtonsankeralli5445 Рік тому +12

    The bomb was conceptualized by Leo Szilard. Fermi did the experimental work.

    • @MirkoNavarra
      @MirkoNavarra Рік тому +8

      Fermi did much more back in Italy, for example the first nuclear scission using slow neutron

    • @danesovic7585
      @danesovic7585 Рік тому +3

      Fermi invented nuclear reactor.

  • @BitwiseMobile
    @BitwiseMobile Рік тому

    Oppenheimer was the face of the Atomic Bomb, but there were many brilliant minds behind it. Not just Fermi. Heisenberg, Einstein, Bohr, Feynman, just to name a few made great contributions towards understanding the strong force and how to unleash that energy. Some of them may not have worked directly at Los Alamos, but their research and theory helped pave the way for understanding fission and ultimately fusion. That research had long lasting impacts on our viewpoints of energy, the formation of stars, and the ultimate fate of all stars in our universe. Energy, cosmology, and physics were changed forever by those gods of physics in the early 20th century as they slowly peeled back the layers of reality to peer into the looking glass of quantum mechanics.

  • @viseshism
    @viseshism Рік тому +1

    I am an electrical engineer. I have learnt some Semiconductor Physics. His work for the bomb is trivial in magnitude and consequence.

    • @danesovic7585
      @danesovic7585 Рік тому

      Really, when does bomb happen if Fermi doesn't invent nuclear reactor?

    • @viseshism
      @viseshism Рік тому +1

      @@danesovic7585 I think I was trying to hard to sound smart and lost the meaning I was trying to convey. What I mean is, the nuclear stuff is good. But it is not as important or critical as his contribution to todays tech world. The Fermi level is one of the most important reference points in designing any semiconductor device .

  • @the_explorer3816
    @the_explorer3816 Рік тому +14

    Nicola Tesla I think.
    He does not get credit for many of his own inventions.

    • @jurgenparkour9337
      @jurgenparkour9337 Рік тому +3

      Tesla was good in his field but absolutely goofy about other fields

    • @LoganNagol
      @LoganNagol Рік тому +4

      Tesla is one of the most overrated inventors ever. Like outside of HELPING establish alternating current he legit didn’t do shit. He failed at almost everything he did. Like Edison might not have been a great dude but he was a far far better inventor

  • @DrMaxPlank
    @DrMaxPlank Рік тому +2

    leo szilard, jonny von neumann, ede teller

  • @metalfingerz4203
    @metalfingerz4203 Рік тому +15

    One of the many italians mind of the other century, incredible how many geniuses were born in a so little country in a little span of time

    • @mikesheth5370
      @mikesheth5370 Рік тому +6

      Italy also produced genius like De Vinci and others!

    • @Slo-ryde
      @Slo-ryde Рік тому +4

      Why is it incredible??…. You have Da Vinci and all the renaissance masters.

    • @metalfingerz4203
      @metalfingerz4203 Рік тому

      @@Slo-ryde i would not consider him "italian" cause at that time Italy was not a thing like today

    • @Slo-ryde
      @Slo-ryde Рік тому +2

      @@metalfingerz4203 you are half right… there was no one identifying themselves as politically Italian back then because there was no Italy we know it now…. But the DNA of medieval people living on the whole Italian peninsula is nearly the same as it is today….the blood line is the same.

    • @Soloohara
      @Soloohara Рік тому

      ???? it was literally called italia" int he roman empire@@Slo-ryde

  • @borovik8714
    @borovik8714 Рік тому

    Maria Skłodowska - Curie.

  • @andreasaste1077
    @andreasaste1077 Рік тому

    The comment at 10:23 that the energy released by the gadget could power 2 million homes for a year is wrong by three orders of magnitude. The energy is much smaller; but it is released within a millionth of a second.

  • @TomMcinerney-g9b
    @TomMcinerney-g9b 7 місяців тому

    Fermi has been called the greatest experimental physicist of 20th century.

  • @michaelspurlock3096
    @michaelspurlock3096 15 днів тому

    Newsthink, thank you for these interesting biographies of the "Great Minds" that have influenced our past, present, and future.

  • @emmarose4234
    @emmarose4234 9 місяців тому

    The high school in the musical Zombie Prom is named for him, as is the real-life Scuola Italiana Enrico Fermi in Chicago!
    Oh, and Jimmy Neutron name-dropped him in at least one episode. “By the spirit of Enrico Fermi…science shall never take a backseat to mindless pop culture again!”

  • @THESMOKERSHUT
    @THESMOKERSHUT Рік тому

    Idk why but the title screen makes me think of Schmidtywarbermanjensen😂😂😂😭. Uk from SpongeBob? “He was number one!!!” 😂

  • @markfilippell2715
    @markfilippell2715 Рік тому +1

    J. Robert Oppenheimer did NOT head up the Manhattan Project. What he did is lead the bomb design effort. General Leslie Groves headed the Manhattan Project.

  • @titicoqui
    @titicoqui Рік тому +1

    one of my heroes with faraday and maxwell

  • @beluga7867
    @beluga7867 Рік тому +1

    Can you make a same type of documentary about Physicist Paul Dirac.

  • @jimoathout7543
    @jimoathout7543 Рік тому +1

    Forgotten? There’s an element named for him.

  • @GrandDaddyCough
    @GrandDaddyCough 8 місяців тому

    2:00 thats muscle hes pulling out

  • @youerny
    @youerny 9 місяців тому

    There are a lot little imprecisions. The estimation of the yeld to 10KTon was pretty accurate since the fermi method was based on order of magnitude, quite like the number of piano tuners in Chicago…
    The paradox also should be interpreted as an extension of this statistical problem analysis. Technically at lunch he was thinking at Drakes equation. Just a ton of years in advance, even before nasa, Apollo, Sagan. Such a genius indeed

  • @DeathValleyDazed
    @DeathValleyDazed Рік тому +11

    Love this history lesson!

  • @LauraRonchetti
    @LauraRonchetti 10 місяців тому

    Enrico Fermi won a Nobel price for the discovery of the “neutrino” and the chain reaction in 1936.