Enrico Fermi: a forgotten article written for Italian teachers

Emanuele Goldoni; Ledo Stefanini

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arXiv · 2308.03160

Enrico Fermi: a forgotten article written for Italian teachers

Emanuele Goldoni·Ledo Stefanini

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Abstract

In 1929, Enrico Fermi wrote "Problemi attuali della fisica" ("Contemporary Problems of Physics"), a short article in Italian published in the magazine "Annali dell'istruzione media". The magazine was sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Schooling and Education, and it was addressed to teachers and principals of middle and high schools. This short text written by Fermi had been forgotten for a long time. However, in recent years it has been republished in Italy; moreover, the "Annali dell'istruzione media" have been digitized and made freely available online. It is unclear why Fermi wrote an article of a clearly divulgative nature for a non-technical journal, but is still interesting to to read his words and appreciate his skills as a great scientific communicator. In this work we include the transcription of the original article in Italian, and we also propose an English translation to make the text available world-wide and accessible to a broader public.

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Emanuele Goldoni, Ledo Stefanini. 2023-08-06. Enrico Fermi: a forgotten article written for Italian teachers. https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.03160

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