The Chicago scientist who boosted Atomic Age

In a scene in the current film "Oppenheimer," we see Robert Oppenheimer, the head of the US government's Manhattan Project, walk across a long football field. Yet the film fails to note, even in a caption, the year (1942) or the location (the stands beneath Stagg Field at the University of Chicago).

We bring this up as the film alludes to something fairly important - one of the actual turning points of World War II.

We all know D-Day, June 6, 1944, when the Allies invaded Normandy Beach in a display of physical bravery unparalleled in human history. Those beaches remain truly hallowed ground.

But people forget that the Windy City first turned the tide two years earlier when a group of scientists succeeded in a daring experiment: They created the first, self-sustaining, nuclear chain reaction.

The team was led by a genius whose birthday we celebrated on Sept. 29: Enrico Fermi, the Chicago physicist dubbed the "Architect of the Atomic Age."

Actually, Fermi was born in Rome on that date in 1901. But his date with destiny was assured in 1938. After winning the Nobel Prize in physics, he promptly fled to America to protest fascist Italy's scandalous anti-Jewish racial laws. (Fermi's wife, Laura Capon, was Italian/Jewish.)

After President FDR set the Manhattan Project into motion in 1940, Fermi, who had been teaching at Columbia University in New York, moved to Chicago in the Spring of 1942 to work on his top-secret experiment.

Months later, on Dec. 2, 1942, he and his team achieved success, giving both a moral and literal boost to the rest of the Manhattan Project.

Fermilab in West suburban Batavia was named in his honor - a fitting tribute to a giant whose birthday officially kicks off Italian American Heritage Month (October). Buon compleanno, Professor Fermi.

Bill dal Cerro

Bensenville