EMILIO SEGRČ.
Born in Tivoli (Rome) on February I, 1905, son of Giuseppe Segrč,
industrialist, and Amelia Segrč Treves. Went to school in Tivoli and
Rome. Entered University of Rome as a student of engineering in
1922. Transferred to the study of physics in 1927 and took his
Doctor's degree in 1928 under Professor Fermi. His was the first
Doctor's degree conferred under the sponsorship of Professor Fermi.
Served in the Italian Army in 1928 and 1929 and entered the
University of Rome as assistant to Professor Corbino in 1929. In 1930 he had a Rockefeller Foundation
Fellowship and worked with Professor Otto Stern at Hamburg, Germany, and Professor Pieter Zeeman at
Amsterdam, Holland. In 1932 returned to Italy and was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of
Rome, working continuously with Professor Fermi and others.
In 1936 Professor Segrč was appointed Director of the Physics Laboratory at the University of Palermo and
remained there until 1938.
In 1938 Professor Segrč came to Berkeley, California, first as a research associate in the Radiation Laboratory
and later as a lecturer in the Physics Department. From 1943 to 1946 he was a group leader in the Los Alamos
Laboratory of the Manhattan District. In 1946 he returned to the University of California at Berkeley as a
Professor of Physics, and still occupies this position.
The work of Professor Segrč has been mainly in atomic physics and nuclear physics. In the first field he worked
in atomic spectroscopy, making contributions to the spectroscopy of forbidden lines and the study of the Zeeman
effect. Except for a short interlude on molecular beams, all his work until 1934 was in atomic spectroscopy. In
1934 he started the work in nuclear physics by collaborating with Professor Fermi on neutron research. He
participated in the discovery of slow neutrons and in the pioneer neutron work carried on in Rome 1934-35.
Later he was interested in radio chemistry and discovered together with Professor Perrier the element
technetium; together with Corson and Mackenzie the element astatine, and together with Kennedy, Seaborg and
Wahl, plutonium-239 and its fission properties. His other investigations in nuclear physics cover many subjects,
e.g., isomerism, spontaneous fission, and lately, high energy physics: here he, his associates and students, have
made contributions to the study of the interaction between nucleons and on the related polarization phenomena.
In 1955 together with Chamberlain, Wiegand and Ypsilantis he discovered the antiproton. The study of
antinucleons is now his major subject of research.
Professor Segrč has taught in temporary appointments at Columbia University, New York, at the University of
Illinois, at the University of Rio de Janeiro and in several other institutions. He is a member of the National
Academy of Science of the United States, of the Academy of Science at Heidelberg (Germany), of the
Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei of Italy, and of other learned societies. He has received the Hofmann Medal of
the German Chemical Society and the Cannizzaro Medal of the Italian Accademia dei Lincei. He is an honorary
Professor of San Marcos University in Peru and is Dr. h.c. of the University of Palermo (Italy). Together with
Owen Chamberlain, he received the Nobel Prize in physics for 1959 for the discovery of the antiproton.
Professor Segrč is married and has three children.
[DR. SEGRÉ DIED IN 1989]
© the Nobel Foundation 1960