In this biography
Quick facts
- Born
- 1905
- Died
- 22 April 1989
- Birthplace
- Tivoli, Italy
- Country
- United States
- Nationality
- Not independently established
- Known for
- Nuclear researcher and science historian.
- Doctoral mentor
- Enrico Fermi
- Chemical collaborator
- Carlo Perrier
- Later activity
- History teaching and archival preservation
Why this life matters
He helped identify new forms of matter through experiments that needed chemical discrimination, particle measurements and careful attention to alternatives.
Timeline
Key moments
Doctorate
Rome physics degree.
Palermo
Laboratory directorship.
Physics recognition
Shares the antiproton Nobel Prize.
Retirement
Continues a historical and archival legacy.
From engineering to physics
Segrè entered Rome as an engineering student, changed to physics and completed his doctorate under Enrico Fermi in 1928. Work with Stern and Zeeman broadened his spectroscopy experience.
His later nuclear research therefore developed from an experimental education that included both atoms and the techniques used to distinguish their properties.
Sources for this section: [2]
Palermo, chemical identification and displacement
He directed Palermo’s physics laboratory from 1936 to 1938.
With Carlo Perrier he investigated radioactive material supplied from Berkeley, using chemical evidence to identify activity associated with element 43.
While he was visiting California in 1938, Italy’s anti-Semitic laws excluded Jews from university teaching. He remained in Berkeley, where Lawrence offered him work.
The transfer of samples and the displacement of a scientist are separate international connections; the chemical investigation itself was affiliated with Palermo.
Nuclear research and a collaborative discovery
Segrè worked on astatine with Corson and MacKenzie and on plutonium-239 with Kennedy, Seaborg and Wahl. He led a Los Alamos group during 1943–1946, returning to Berkeley afterward.
He and Owen Chamberlain shared the 1959 physics Nobel for the antiproton.
The award named two people, while the experimental collaboration extended further. The research also belongs to the history of wartime weapons work, rather than a detached sequence of prizes.
Teaching history and preserving a record
He taught physics and history of science until retiring in 1972. His photographic donation helped create the AIP visual archive that bears his name. He died in 1989.
That later work made the documentation of scientific lives part of his legacy. A finding aid can establish the existence and scope of such records without pretending that every notebook, photograph or oral history has been inspected.
Sources for this section: [3]
Quick answers
Frequently asked questions about Emilio Segrè
- Does radioactivity alone identify an element?
- No. The guide distinguishes a time-dependent signal from the additional evidence needed for an elemental assignment.
- Was the entire archive read?
- No. Only the institutional finding aid’s selected biographical account was inspected.
Keep exploring
Lives connected to this story
- Owen Chamberlain
Follow a collaborator’s later research and civic career.
- Maria Goeppert Mayer
Compare another career shaped by nuclear research and institutional conditions.
Sources and further reading
Explore the evidence
These references support the biography and offer further reading. Official records, first-person accounts and independent reporting provide different perspectives; image records document attribution and licensing.
- 1. Nobel Prize OutreachEmilio Segrè: Facts
- 2. Nobel Foundation, award-era biography with stated updatesEmilio Segrè: Biographical
- 3. Bancroft Library / Online Archive of CaliforniaSegrè (Emilio) papers: biographical/historical note
- 4. C. Perrier and E. Segrè / Nature 140, 193–194 (1937)Radioactive Isotopes of Element 43