Enrico Fermi and the Physics and Engineering of a Nuclear Pile: the Retrieval of Novel Documents

We give a detailed account of the recent retrieval of a consistent amount (about 600 pages) of documents written by Enrico Fermi and/or his collaborators, coming from different sources previously unexplored. These documents include articles, patents, reports, notes on scientific and technical meetings and other papers, mainly testifying Fermi’s activity in the 1940s about nuclear pile physics and engineering. All of them have been carefully described, pointing out the relevance of the given papers for their scientific or even historical content. From the analysis of these papers, a number of important scientific and technical points comes out, putting a truly new light on the Fermi’s (and others’) scientific activity about nuclear piles and their applications. Quite unexpectedly intriguing historical remarks, such as those regarding the relationships between U.S. and Britain, just after the end of the war, about nuclear power for pacific and/or military use, or even regarding long term physics research and post-war research policy, emerge as well.