Lise Meitner, Emilio Gino Segré, Enrico Fermi and even Leó Szilárd, are four names to whom we owe breaking the atom, one of the highest achievements of our times. Enrico Fermi, Nobel Prize awardee in 1938, was responsible for the first nuclear reactor. His patent was shared with Leó Szilárd, who also had the bold spirit of the most successful physicists. This could have not been achieved without the work of Lise Meitner, whose team discovered nuclear fission itself, even though the Nobel Academy never acknowledged her name. Emilio Gino Segré received the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the antiproton, thanks to the development of atomic spectroscopy.
The eccentric figure of Szilárd, carrying a suitcase from one hotel to the next; the good-natured Meitner, her unfairly forgotten Nobel; the austere Segré; the restless eyes of Fermi… all of them share a common circumstance: exile. They all had to flee from ignorance, barbarism, and violence to continue building a better world.
El arte de partir el átomo
