Ugo Fano (July 28, 1912 – February 13, 2001) was an Italian American physicist, notable for contributions to theoretical physics.

Biography

Ugo Fano was born into a wealthy Jewish family in Turin, Italy. His father was Gino Fano, a professor of mathematics. electromagnetic waves: asymmetric connections in non-Riemannian geometry).

European years

Fano worked with Enrico Fermi in Rome, where he was a senior member of 'Via Panisperna boys'. It was during this period that with the urging of Fermi, Fano developed his seminal theory of resonant configuration interaction (Fano resonance profile), which led to two papers, in 1935 and 1961. The latter is one of the most cited articles published in the Physical Review.

Fano spent 1936–37 with Werner Heisenberg in Leipzig.

Career in the United States

In 1939, he married Camilla Lattes, His initial work in the U.S. was on bacteriophages and pioneering work in the study of radiological physics, specifically, the differences in the biological effects of X-rays and neutrons.

After serving a stint at the Aberdeen Proving Ground during World War II, he joined the staff of the National Bureau of Standards (NBS, now the National Institute of Standards and Technology), where he was hired as the first theoretical physicist on the NBS staff. He served there until 1966, when he joined the faculty of physics at the University of Chicago. There he trained, until the early 1990s, about thirty graduate students and postdoctoral research associates, His most-cited work is the 1961 paper mentioned above.

The July–to September 2000 issue of Physics Essays was dedicated to Ugo Fano, including a posthumous paper from Fano.

References

  • R. Stephen Berry, Mitio Inokuti and A. R. P. Rau, "Ugo Fano", Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (2009).
  • Guide to the Ugo Fano Papers 1925-1999 at the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center