Nobel Prize - Enrico Fermi

In The Hesperus Prophecy, Declan takes a rare break to read a newspaper article about the year’s Noble Prize winners. Professor Riordan isn’t impressed.

 “Nothing will ever come of it,” comments Declan, “just some glow-in-the-dark paint for alarm clocks. Maybe next year a radioactive decapitated puppy will win the prize,” he scoffs.

The glow-in-the-dark paint is a reference to Enrico Fermi’s work in nuclear physics. Fermi, known as the “Architect of the Nuclear Age”, won the Nobel Prize for discovering how neutron irradiation created new radioactive elements, as well as explaining how neutrons behave in nuclear reactions. He found slow neutrons are more readily captured by atomic nuclei, leading to a greater probability of nuclear reactions compared to fast neutrons, a crucial detail in developing nuclear fission.