Unearthing Fermi's geophysics : based on Enrico Fermi's geophysics lectures of 1941 /

Nobel Prize laureate Enrico Fermi (1901--1954) was famous among physicists for the simplicity with which he explained complex questions and made valid numerical estimates about many phenomena. Fermi worked primarily in nuclear and particle physics and built the world's first nuclear reactor. This book is based on notes he made for a course in geophysics that he taught to senior-level physics students between 1939 and 1941 at Columbia University, soon after he arrived in the US from Italy. The text is not meant to be comprehensive, and some of the original material is clearly out of date. Supporting this volume as a work of veneration with significant archival interest, most chapters begin with a photographic image of a page from Fermi's original notes, which are available for download. The text expands on and explains Fermi's notes with annotations by Segrè (emer., Univ. of Pennsylvania) and Stack (emer., Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), providing supplementary equations and numerical calculations. Both authors have deep connections to Fermi. The book covers a variety of topics, from Earth's gravitational field to atmospheric electricity. Understanding of undergraduate physics and partial differential equations is assumed. The likely audience includes historians of science, admirers of Fermi, and curious physicists and geophysicists, as well as professional archivists. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students and faculty. General readers. --Martha Dickinson, formerly, Maine Maritime Academy