Gino Segre
| Gino Claudio Segre | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Gino Claudio Segrè October 4, 1938 Florence, Italy |
| Nationality | Italian, American |
Gino Claudio Segrè (born October 4, 1938) is a Professor of Physics, Emeritus, at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of several books on the history of science, particularly on atomic physics. Segrè’s Faust in Copenhagen was a finalist in the Los Angeles Times Book Fair and winner of the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award.
Gino Segrè was born in Florence, Italy, to an Italian Jewish father (Angelo Segrè) and a German Catholic mother (Katherine ‘Katia’ Schall Segrè). The family immigrated to New York City in May 1939, where they resided for 8 years before returning to Florence. Segre’s uncle, Nobel laureate physicist Emilio Segrè also emigrated to the United States in 1938 because of the anti-semitic laws enacted in Italy.
Gino Segrè received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard College in 1959 and a Ph.D. degree in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1963. Afterwards, Segre became a fellow at CERN and the University of California, Berkeley. He joined the University of Pennsylvania physics department as a professor in 1967, where he remained until he retired in 2007. His honors include fellowships from Guggenheim Foundation, Sloan Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation.
Since 2002, Segrè has published four books on the history of science. Written together with Bettina Hoerlin, Segrè's Pope of Physics: Enrico Fermi and the Birth of the Atomic Age" is a biography of the famous Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, whose colleagues referred to him as the Pope due to his infallibility. Fermi has a rich legacy of scientific advances, and is best known for his leadership in building the atomic bomb. "Pope of Physics" was reviewed by the The Wall Street Journal and Nature. Segrè's Ordinary Geniuses is a dual biography of Max Delbruck and George Gamow, two physicists who made major contributions to the field of biology with their 'pioneering' spirits and practical jokes. Ordinary Geniuses was reviewed by Jeremy Bernstein in The Wall Street Journal and Jonathon Keats in New Scientist. Segrè's book Faust in Copenhagen recounts how a group of 40 physicists assembled at Niels Bohr’s Copenhagen Institute focusing on the discovery of the neutron. On the final night of the meeting, the younger physicists mount a skit that was a parody of Goethe’s Faust, adapted to the world of physics. By Segre’s description, ‘What the physicists didn’t realize was that within a year, Hitler’s ascent to power would change their world and within a decade their studies of the atomic nucleus would force them to make their own Faustian bargains.’ Faust in Copenhagen was reviewed in the Sunday New York Times book section by George Johnson.
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