Enrico Fermi

Enrico Fermi (; 29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954) was an Italian and later naturalized American physicist, renowned for being the creator of the world's first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1, and a member of the Manhattan Project. He has been called the "architect of the nuclear age" and the "architect of the atomic bomb". He was one of very few physicists to excel in both theoretical physics and experimental physics. Fermi was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on induced radioactivity by neutron bombardment and for the discovery of transuranium elements. With his colleagues, Fermi filed several patents related to the use of nuclear power, all of which were taken over by the US government. He made significant contributions to the development of statistical mechanics, quantum theory, and nuclear and particle physics.

Fermi's first major contribution involved the field of statistical mechanics. After Wolfgang Pauli formulated his exclusion principle in 1925, Fermi followed with a paper in which he applied the principle to an ideal gas, employing a statistical formulation now known as Fermi–Dirac statistics. Today, particles that obey the exclusion principle are called "fermions". Pauli later postulated the existence of an uncharged invisible particle emitted along with an electron during beta decay, to satisfy the law of conservation of energy. Fermi took up this idea, developing a model that incorporated the postulated particle, which he named the "neutrino". His theory, later referred to as Fermi's interaction and now called weak interaction, described one of the four fundamental interactions in nature. Through experiments inducing radioactivity with the recently discovered neutron, Fermi discovered that slow neutrons were more easily captured by atomic nuclei than fast ones, and he developed the Fermi age equation to describe this. After bombarding thorium and uranium with slow neutrons, he concluded that he had created new elements. Although he was awarded the Nobel Prize for this discovery, the new elements were later revealed to be nuclear fission products.

Fermi left Italy in 1938 to escape new Italian racial laws that affected his Jewish wife, Laura Capon. He emigrated to the United States, where he worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. Fermi led the team at the University of Chicago that designed and built Chicago Pile-1, which went critical on 2 December 1942, demonstrating the first human-created, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. He was on hand when the X-10 Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge, Tennessee went critical in 1943, and when the B Reactor at the Hanford Site did so the next year. At Los Alamos, he headed F Division, part of which worked on Edward Teller's thermonuclear "Super" bomb. He was present at the Trinity test on 16 July 1945, where he used his Fermi method to estimate the bomb's yield.

After the war, Fermi served under J. Robert Oppenheimer on the General Advisory Committee, which advised the Atomic Energy Commission on nuclear matters. After the detonation of the first Soviet fission bomb in August 1949, he strongly opposed the development of a hydrogen bomb on both moral and technical grounds. He was among the scientists who testified on Oppenheimer's behalf at the 1954 hearing that resulted in the denial of Oppenheimer's security clearance.

Fermi did important work in particle physics, especially related to pions and muons, and he speculated that cosmic rays arose when material was accelerated by magnetic fields in interstellar space. Many awards, concepts, and institutions are named after Fermi, including the Enrico Fermi Award, the Enrico Fermi Institute, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, the Fermi paradox, and the synthetic element fermium, making him one of 16 scientists who have elements named after them.

## Early life

Enrico Fermi was born in Rome, Italy, on 29 September 1901. He was the third child of Alberto Fermi, a division head in the Ministry of Railways, and Ida de Gattis, an elementary school teacher. His sister, Maria, was two years older, his brother Giulio a year older. After the two boys were sent to a rural community to be wet nursed, Enrico rejoined his family in Rome when he was two and a half. Although he was baptized a Roman Catholic in accordance with his grandparents' wishes, his family was not particularly religious; He continued to pray throughout his life and attached great importance to the idea of God. As a young boy, he shared the same interests as his brother Giulio, building electric motors and playing with electrical and mechanical toys. Giulio died during an operation on a throat abscess in 1915 and Maria died in an airplane crash near Milan in 1959.

At a local market in Campo de' Fiori, Fermi found a physics book, the 900-page Elementorum physicae mathematicae. Written in Latin by Jesuit Father Andrea Caraffa [it], a professor at the Collegio Romano, it presented mathematics, classical mechanics, astronomy, optics, and acoustics as they were understood at the time of its 1840 publication. With a scientifically inclined friend, Enrico Persico, Fermi pursued projects such as building gyroscopes and measuring the acceleration of Earth's gravity.

In 1914, Fermi, who used to often meet with his father in front of the office after work, met a colleague of his father called Adolfo Amidei, who would walk part of the way home with Alberto. Enrico had learned that Adolfo was interested in mathematics and physics and took the opportunity to ask Adolfo a question about geometry. Adolfo understood that the young Fermi was referring to projective geometry and then proceeded to give him a book on the subject written by Theodor Reye. Two months later, Fermi returned the book, having solved all the problems proposed at the end of the book, some of which Adolfo considered difficult. Upon verifying this, Adolfo felt that Fermi was "a prodigy, at least with respect to geometry", and further mentored the boy, providing him with more books on physics and mathematics. Adolfo noted that Fermi had a very good memory and thus could return the books after having read them because he could remember their content very well.

## Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa

Fermi graduated from high school in July 1918, having skipped the third year entirely. At Amidei's urging, Fermi learned German to be able to read the many scientific papers that were published in that language at the time, and he applied to the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. Amidei felt that the Scuola would provide better conditions for Fermi's development than the Sapienza University of Rome could at the time. Having lost one son, Fermi's parents only reluctantly allowed him to live in the school's lodgings away from Rome for four years. Fermi took first place in the difficult entrance exam, which included an essay on the theme of "Specific characteristics of Sounds"; the 17-year-old Fermi chose to use Fourier analysis to derive and solve the partial differential equation for a vibrating rod, and after interviewing Fermi the examiner declared he would become an outstanding physicist.

At the Scuola Normale Superiore, Fermi played pranks with fellow student Franco Rasetti; the two became close friends and collaborators. Fermi was advised by Luigi Puccianti, director of the physics laboratory, who said there was little he could teach Fermi and often asked Fermi to teach him something instead. Fermi's knowledge of quantum physics was such that Puccianti asked him to organize seminars on the topic. During this time Fermi learned tensor calculus, a technique key to general relativity. Fermi initially chose mathematics as his major, but soon switched to physics. He remained largely self-taught, studying general relativity, quantum mechanics, and atomic physics.

In September 1920, Fermi was admitted to the physics department. Since there were only three students in the department—Fermi, Rasetti, and Nello Carrara—Puccianti let them freely use the laboratory for whatever purposes they chose. Fermi decided that they should research X-ray crystallography, and the three worked to produce a Laue photograph—an X-ray photograph of a crystal. During 1921, his third year at the university, Fermi published his first scientific works in the Italian journal Nuovo Cimento. The first was entitled "On the dynamics of a rigid system of electrical charges in translational motion" (Sulla dinamica di un sistema rigido di cariche elettriche in moto traslatorio). A sign of things to come was that the mass was expressed as a tensor—a mathematical construct commonly used to describe something moving and changing in three-dimensional space. In classical mechanics, mass is a scalar quantity, but in relativity, it changes with velocity. The second paper was "On the electrostatics of a uniform gravitational field of electromagnetic charges and on the weight of electromagnetic charges" (Sull'elettrostatica di un campo gravitazionale uniforme e sul peso delle masse elettromagnetiche). Using general relativity, Fermi showed that a charge has a weight equal to U/c2, where U was the electrostatic energy of the system, and c is the speed of light.

The first paper seemed to point out a contradiction between the electrodynamic theory and the relativistic one concerning the calculation of the electromagnetic masses, as the former predicted a value of 4/3 U/c2. Fermi addressed this the next year in a paper "Concerning a contradiction between electrodynamic and the relativistic theory of electromagnetic mass" in which he showed that the apparent contradiction was a consequence of relativity. This paper was sufficiently well-regarded that it was translated into German and published in the German scientific journal Physikalische Zeitschrift in 1922. That year, Fermi submitted his article "On the phenomena occurring near a world line" (Sopra i fenomeni che avvengono in vicinanza di una linea oraria) to the Italian journal I Rendiconti dell'Accademia dei Lincei [it]. In this article he examined the Principle of Equivalence, and introduced the so-called "Fermi coordinates". He proved that on a world line close to the timeline, space behaves as if it were a Euclidean space.

Fermi submitted his thesis, "A theorem on probability and some of its applications" (Un teorema di calcolo delle probabilità ed alcune sue applicazioni), to the Scuola Normale Superiore in July 1922, and received his laurea at the unusually young age of 20. The thesis was on X-ray diffraction images. Theoretical physics was not yet considered a discipline in Italy, and the only thesis that would have been accepted was experimental physics. For this reason, Italian physicists were slow in embracing the new ideas like relativity coming from Germany. Since Fermi was quite at home in the lab doing experimental work, this did not pose insurmountable problems for him.

While writing the appendix for the Italian edition of the book Fundamentals of Einstein Relativity by August Kopff in 1923, Fermi was the first to point out that hidden inside the Einstein equation (E = mc2) was an enormous amount of nuclear potential energy to be exploited. "It does not seem possible, at least in the near future", he wrote, "to find a way to release these dreadful amounts of energy—which is all to the good because the first effect of an explosion of such a dreadful amount of energy would be to smash into smithereens the physicist who had the misfortune to find a way to do it."

In 1924, Fermi was initiated into the Masonic Lodge "Adriano Lemmi" of the Grand Orient of Italy.

In 1923–1924, Fermi spent a semester studying under Max Born at the University of Göttingen, where he met Werner Heisenberg and Pascual Jordan. Fermi then studied in Leiden with Paul Ehrenfest from September to December 1924 on a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation obtained through the intercession of the mathematician Vito Volterra. Here Fermi met Hendrik Lorentz and Albert Einstein, and became friends with Samuel Goudsmit and Jan Tinbergen. From January 1925 to late 1926, Fermi taught mathematical physics and theoretical mechanics at the University of Florence, where he teamed up with Rasetti to conduct a series of experiments on the effects of magnetic fields on mercury vapor. He also participated in seminars at the Sapienza University of Rome, giving lectures on quantum mechanics and solid state physics. While giving lectures on the new quantum mechanics based on the remarkable accuracy of predictions of the Schrödinger equation, Fermi would often say, "It has no business to fit so well!"

After Wolfgang Pauli announced his exclusion principle in 1925, Fermi responded with a paper "On the quantization of the perfect monoatomic gas" (Sulla quantizzazione del gas perfetto monoatomico), in which he applied the exclusion principle to an ideal gas. The paper was especially notable for Fermi's statistical formulation, which describes the distribution of particles in systems of many identical particles that obey the exclusion principle. This was independently developed soon after by the British physicist Paul Dirac, who also showed how it was related to the Bose–Einstein statistics. Accordingly, it is now known as Fermi–Dirac statistics. After Dirac, particles that obey the exclusion principle are today called "fermions", while those that do not are called "bosons".

## Professor in Rome

Professorships in Italy were granted by competition (concorso) for a vacant chair, the applicants being rated on their publications by a committee of professors. Fermi applied for a chair of mathematical physics at the University of Cagliari on Sardinia, but was narrowly passed over in favour of Giovanni Giorgi. In 1926, at the age of 24, he applied for a professorship at the Sapienza University of Rome. This was a new chair, one of the first three in theoretical physics in Italy, that had been created by the Minister of Education at the urging of professor Orso Mario Corbino, who was the university's professor of experimental physics, the director of the Institute of Physics, and a member of Benito Mussolini's cabinet. Corbino, who also chaired the selection committee, hoped that the new chair would raise the standard and reputation of physics in Italy. The committee chose Fermi ahead of Enrico Persico and Aldo Pontremoli, and Corbino helped Fermi recruit his team, which was soon joined by notable students such as Edoardo Amaldi, Bruno Pontecorvo, Ettore Majorana and Emilio Segrè, and by Franco Rasetti, whom Fermi had appointed as his assistant. They soon nicknamed the "Via Panisperna boys" after the street where the Institute of Physics was located.

Fermi married Laura Capon, a science student at the university, on 19 July 1928. They had two children: Nella, born in January 1931, and Giulio, born in February 1936. On 18 March 1929, Fermi was appointed a member of the Royal Academy of Italy by Mussolini, and on 27 April he joined the Fascist Party. He later opposed Fascism when the 1938 racial laws were promulgated by Mussolini in order to bring Italian Fascism ideologically closer to German Nazism. These laws threatened Laura, who was Jewish, and put many of Fermi's research assistants out of work.

During their time in Rome, Fermi and his group made important contributions to many practical and theoretical aspects of physics. In 1928, he published his Introduction to Atomic Physics (Introduzione alla fisica atomica), which provided Italian university students with an up-to-date and accessible text. Fermi also conducted public lectures and wrote popular articles for scientists and teachers in order to spread knowledge of the new physics as widely as possible. Part of his teaching method was to gather his colleagues and graduate students together at the end of the day and go over a problem, often from his own research. A sign of success was that foreign students now began to come to Italy. The most notable of these was the German physicist Hans Bethe, who came to Rome as a Rockefeller Foundation fellow, and collaborated with Fermi on a 1932 paper "On the Interaction between Two Electrons" (German: Über die Wechselwirkung von Zwei Elektronen).

At this time, physicists were puzzled by beta decay, in which an electron was emitted from the atomic nucleus. To satisfy the law of conservation of energy, Pauli postulated the existence of an invisible particle with no charge and little or no mass that was also emitted at the same time. Fermi took up this idea, which he developed in a tentative paper in 1933, and then a longer paper the next year that incorporated the postulated particle, which Fermi called a "neutrino". His theory, later referred to as Fermi's interaction, and still later as the theory of the weak interaction, described one of the four fundamental forces of nature. The neutrino was detected after his death, and his interaction theory showed why it was so difficult to detect. When he submitted his paper to the British journal Nature, that journal's editor turned it down because it contained speculations which were "too remote from physical reality to be of interest to readers". Thus Fermi saw the theory published in Italian and German before it was published in English.

In the introduction to the 1968 English translation, physicist Fred L. Wilson noted that:

> Fermi's theory, aside from bolstering Pauli's proposal of the neutrino, has a special significance in the history of modern physics. One must remember that only the naturally occurring β emitters were known at the time the theory was proposed. Later when positron decay was discovered, the process was easily incorporated within Fermi's original framework. On the basis of his theory, the capture of an orbital electron by a nucleus was predicted and eventually observed. With time, experimental data accumulated significantly. Although peculiarities have been observed many times in β decay, Fermi's theory always has been equal to the challenge.
> The consequences of the Fermi theory are vast. For example, β spectroscopy was established as a powerful tool for the study of nuclear structure. But perhaps the most influential aspect of this work of Fermi is that his particular form of the β interaction established a pattern that has been appropriate for the study of other types of interactions. It was the first successful theory of the creation and annihilation of material particles. Previously, only photons had been known to be created and destroyed.

In January 1934, Irène Joliot-Curie and Frédéric Joliot announced that they had bombarded elements with alpha particles and induced radioactivity in them. By March, Fermi's assistant Gian-Carlo Wick had provided a theoretical explanation using Fermi's theory of beta decay. Fermi decided to switch to experimental physics, using the neutron, which James Chadwick had discovered in 1932. In March 1934, Fermi wanted to see if he could induce radioactivity with Rasetti's polonium-beryllium neutron source. Neutrons had no electric charge, and so would not be deflected by the positively charged nucleus. This meant that they needed much less energy to penetrate the nucleus than charged particles, and so would not require a particle accelerator, which the Via Panisperna boys did not have.

Fermi had the idea to resort to replacing the polonium-beryllium neutron source with a radon-beryllium one, which he created by filling a glass bulb with beryllium powder, evacuating the air, and then adding 50 mCi of radon gas, supplied by Giulio Cesare Trabacchi. This created a much stronger neutron source, the effectiveness of which declined with the 3.8-day half-life of radon. He knew that this source would also emit gamma rays, but, on the basis of his theory, he believed that this would not affect the results of the experiment. He started by bombarding platinum, an element with a high atomic number that was readily available, without success. He turned to aluminium, which emitted an alpha particle and produced sodium, which then decayed into magnesium by beta particle emission. He tried lead, without success, and then fluorine in the form of calcium fluoride, which emitted an alpha particle and produced nitrogen, decaying into oxygen by beta particle emission. In all, he induced radioactivity in 22 different elements. Fermi rapidly reported the discovery of neutron-induced radioactivity in the Italian journal La Ricerca Scientifica on 25 March 1934.

The natural radioactivity of thorium and uranium made it hard to determine what was happening when these elements were bombarded with neutrons but, after correctly eliminating the presence of elements lighter than uranium but heavier than lead, Fermi concluded that they had created new elements, which he called hesperium and ausonium. The chemist Ida Noddack suggested that some of the experiments could have produced lighter elements than lead rather than new, heavier elements. Her suggestion was not taken seriously at the time because her team had not carried out any experiments with uranium or built the theoretical basis for this possibility. At that time, fission was thought to be improbable if not impossible on theoretical grounds. While physicists expected elements with higher atomic numbers to form from neutron bombardment of lighter elements, nobody expected neutrons to have enough energy to split a heavier atom into two light element fragments in the manner that Noddack suggested.

The Via Panisperna boys also noticed some unexplained effects. The experiment seemed to work better on a wooden table than on a marble tabletop. Fermi remembered that Joliot-Curie and Chadwick had noted that paraffin wax was effective at slowing neutrons, so he decided to try that. When neutrons were passed through paraffin wax, they induced a hundred times as much radioactivity in silver compared with when it was bombarded without the paraffin. Fermi guessed that this was due to the hydrogen atoms in the paraffin. Those in wood similarly explained the difference between the wooden and the marble tabletops. This was confirmed by repeating the effect with water. He concluded that collisions with hydrogen atoms slowed the neutrons. The lower the atomic number of the nucleus it collides with, the more energy a neutron loses per collision, and therefore the fewer collisions that are required to slow a neutron down by a given amount. Fermi realised that this induced more radioactivity because slow neutrons were more easily captured than fast ones. He developed a diffusion equation to describe this, which became known as the Fermi age equation.

In 1938, Fermi received the Nobel Prize in Physics at the age of 37 for his "demonstrations of the existence of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation, and for his related discovery of nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons". After Fermi received the prize in Stockholm, he did not return home to Italy but rather continued to New York City with his family in December 1938, where they applied for permanent residency. The decision to move to America and become US citizens was due primarily to the racial laws in Italy.

## Manhattan Project

Fermi arrived in New York City on 2 January 1939. He was immediately offered positions at five universities, and accepted one at Columbia University, where he had already given summer lectures in 1936. He received the news that in December 1938, the German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann had detected the element barium after bombarding uranium with neutrons, which Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch correctly interpreted as the result of nuclear fission. Frisch confirmed this experimentally on 13 January 1939. The news of Meitner and Frisch's interpretation of Hahn and Strassmann's discovery crossed the Atlantic with Niels Bohr, who was to lecture at Princeton University. Isidor Isaac Rabi and Willis Lamb, two Columbia University physicists working at Princeton, found out about it and carried it back to Columbia. Rabi said he told Enrico Fermi, but Fermi later gave the credit to Lamb:

> I remember very vividly the first month, January, 1939, that I started working at the Pupin Laboratories because things began happening very fast. In that period, Niels Bohr was on a lecture engagement at the Princeton University and I remember one afternoon Willis Lamb came back very excited and said that Bohr had leaked out great news. The great news that had leaked out was the discovery of fission and at least the outline of its interpretation. Then, somewhat later that same month, there was a meeting in Washington where the possible importance of the newly discovered phenomenon of fission was first discussed in semi-jocular earnest as a possible source of nuclear power.

Noddack was proven right after all. Fermi had dismissed the possibility of fission on the basis of his calculations, but he had not taken into account the binding energy that would appear when a nuclide with an odd number of neutrons absorbed an extra neutron. For Fermi, the news came as a profound embarrassment, as the transuranic elements that he had partly been awarded the Nobel Prize for discovering had not been transuranic elements at all, but fission products. He added a footnote to this effect to his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

The scientists at Columbia decided that they should try to detect the energy released in the nuclear fission of uranium when bombarded by neutrons. On 25 January 1939, in the basement of Pupin Hall at Columbia, an experimental team including Fermi conducted the first nuclear fission experiment in the United States. The other members of the team were Herbert L. Anderson, Eugene T. Booth, John R. Dunning, G. Norris Glasoe, and Francis G. Slack. The next day, the Fifth Washington Conference on Theoretical Physics began in Washington, D.C. under the joint auspices of George Washington University and the Carnegie Institution of Washington. There, the news on nuclear fission was spread even further, fostering many more experimental demonstrations.

French scientists Hans von Halban, Lew Kowarski, and Frédéric Joliot-Curie had demonstrated that uranium bombarded by neutrons emitted more neutrons than it absorbed, suggesting the possibility of a chain reaction. Fermi and Anderson did so too a few weeks later. Leó Szilárd obtained 200 kilograms (440 lb) of uranium oxide from Canadian radium producer Eldorado Gold Mines Limited, allowing Fermi and Anderson to conduct experiments with fission on a much larger scale. Fermi and Szilárd collaborated on the design of a device to achieve a self-sustaining nuclear reaction—a nuclear reactor. Owing to the rate of absorption of neutrons by the hydrogen in water, it was unlikely that a self-sustaining reaction could be achieved with natural uranium and water as a neutron moderator. Fermi suggested, based on his work with neutrons, that the reaction could be achieved with uranium oxide blocks and graphite as a moderator instead of water. This would reduce the neutron capture rate, and in theory make a self-sustaining chain reaction possible. Szilárd came up with a workable design: a pile of uranium oxide blocks interspersed with graphite bricks. Szilárd, Anderson, and Fermi published a paper on "Neutron Production in Uranium". But their work habits and personalities were different, and Fermi had trouble working with Szilárd.

Fermi was among the first to warn military leaders about the potential impact of nuclear energy, giving a lecture on the subject at the Navy Department on 18 March 1939. The response fell short of what he had hoped for, although the Navy agreed to provide \$1,500 towards further research at Columbia. Later that year, Szilárd, Eugene Wigner, and Edward Teller sent the letter signed by Einstein to US president Franklin D. Roosevelt, warning that Nazi Germany was likely to build an atomic bomb. In response, Roosevelt formed the Advisory Committee on Uranium to investigate the matter.

The Advisory Committee on Uranium provided money for Fermi to buy graphite, and he built a pile of graphite bricks on the seventh floor of the Pupin Hall laboratory. By August 1941, he had six tons of uranium oxide and thirty tons of graphite, which he used to build a still larger pile in Schermerhorn Hall at Columbia.

The S-1 Section of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, as the Advisory Committee on Uranium was now known, met on 18 December 1941, with the US now engaged in World War II, making its work urgent. Most of the effort sponsored by the committee had been directed at producing enriched uranium, but Committee member Arthur Compton determined that a feasible alternative was plutonium, which could be mass-produced in nuclear reactors by the end of 1944. He decided to concentrate the plutonium work at the University of Chicago. Fermi reluctantly moved, and his team became part of the new Metallurgical Laboratory there.

The possible results of a self-sustaining nuclear reaction were unknown, so it seemed inadvisable to build the first nuclear reactor on the University of Chicago campus in the middle of the city. Compton found a location in the Argonne Woods Forest Preserve, about 20 miles (32 km) from Chicago. Stone & Webster was contracted to develop the site, but the work was halted by an industrial dispute. Fermi then persuaded Compton that he could build the reactor in the squash court under the stands of the University of Chicago's Stagg Field. Construction of the pile began on 6 November 1942, and Chicago Pile-1 went critical on 2 December. The shape of the pile was intended to be roughly spherical, but as work proceeded Fermi calculated that criticality could be achieved without finishing the entire pile as planned.

This experiment was a landmark in the quest for energy, and it was typical of Fermi's approach. Every step was carefully planned, and every calculation was meticulously done. When the first self-sustained nuclear chain reaction was achieved, Compton made a coded phone call to James B. Conant, the chairman of the National Defense Research Committee.

> I picked up the phone and called Conant. He was reached at the President's office at Harvard University. "Jim," I said, "you'll be interested to know that the Italian navigator has just landed in the new world." Then, half apologetically, because I had led the S-l Committee to believe that it would be another week or more before the pile could be completed, I added, "the earth was not as large as he had estimated, and he arrived at the new world sooner than he had expected."
>
> "Is that so," was Conant's excited response. "Were the natives friendly?" "Everyone landed safe and happy."

To continue the research where it would not pose a public health hazard, the reactor was disassembled and moved to the Argonne Woods site. There Fermi directed experiments on nuclear reactions, reveling in the opportunities provided by the reactor's abundant production of free neutrons. The laboratory soon branched out from physics and engineering into using the reactor for biological and medical research. Initially, Argonne was run by Fermi as part of the University of Chicago, but it became a separate entity with Fermi as its director in May 1944.

When the air-cooled X-10 Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge went critical on 4 November 1943, Fermi was on hand just in case something went wrong. The technicians woke him early so that he could see it happen. Getting X-10 operational was another milestone in the plutonium project. It provided data on reactor design, training for DuPont staff in reactor operation, and produced the first small quantities of reactor-bred plutonium. Fermi became an American citizen in July 1944, the earliest date the law allowed.

In September 1944, Fermi inserted the first uranium fuel slug into the B Reactor at the Hanford Site, the production reactor designed to breed plutonium in large quantities. Like X-10, it had been designed by Fermi's team at the Metallurgical Laboratory and built by DuPont, but it was much larger and was water-cooled. Over the next few days, 838 tubes were loaded, and the reactor went critical. Shortly after midnight on 27 September, the operators began to withdraw the control rods to initiate production. At first, all appeared to be well, but around 03:00, the power level started to drop and by 06:30 the reactor had shut down completely. The Army and DuPont turned to Fermi's team for answers. The cooling water was investigated to see if there was a leak or contamination. The next day the reactor suddenly started up again, only to shut down once more a few hours later. The problem was traced to neutron poisoning from xenon-135 or Xe-135, a fission product with a half-life of 9.1 to 9.4 hours. Fermi and John Wheeler both deduced that Xe-135 was responsible for absorbing neutrons in the reactor, thereby sabotaging the fission process. Fermi was recommended by colleague Emilio Segrè to ask Chien-Shiung Wu, as she prepared a printed draft on this topic to be published by the Physical Review. Upon reading the draft, Fermi and the scientists confirmed their suspicions: Xe-135 indeed absorbed neutrons, in fact it had a huge neutron cross-section. DuPont had deviated from the Metallurgical Laboratory's original design in which the reactor had 1,500 tubes arranged in a circle, and had added 504 tubes to fill in the corners. The scientists had originally considered this over-engineering a waste of time and money, but Fermi realized that if all 2,004 tubes were loaded, the reactor could reach the required power level and efficiently produce plutonium.

In April 1943, Fermi raised with Robert Oppenheimer the possibility of using the radioactive byproducts from enrichment to contaminate the German food supply. The background was fear that the German atomic bomb project was already at an advanced stage, and Fermi was also skeptical at the time that an atomic bomb could be developed quickly enough. Oppenheimer discussed the "promising" proposal with Edward Teller, who suggested the use of strontium-90. James B. Conant and Leslie Groves were also briefed, but Oppenheimer wanted to proceed with the plan only if enough food could be contaminated with the weapon to kill half a million people.

In mid-1944, Oppenheimer persuaded Fermi to join his Project Y at Los Alamos, New Mexico. Arriving in September, Fermi was appointed an associate director of the laboratory, with broad responsibility for nuclear and theoretical physics, and was placed in charge of F Division, which was named after him. F Division had four branches: F-1 Super and General Theory under Teller, which investigated the "Super" (thermonuclear) bomb; F-2 Water Boiler under L. D. P. King, which looked after the "water boiler" aqueous homogeneous research reactor; F-3 Super Experimentation under Egon Bretscher; and F-4 Fission Studies under Anderson. Fermi observed the Trinity test on 16 July 1945 and conducted an experiment to estimate the bomb's yield by dropping strips of paper into the blast wave. He paced off the distance they were blown by the explosion, and calculated the yield as ten kilotons of TNT; the actual yield was about 18.6 kilotons.

Along with Oppenheimer, Compton, and Ernest Lawrence, Fermi was part of the scientific panel that advised the Interim Committee on target selection. The panel agreed with the committee that atomic bombs would be used without warning against an industrial target. Like others at the Los Alamos Laboratory, Fermi found out about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the public address system in the technical area. Fermi did not believe that atomic bombs would deter nations from starting wars, nor did he think that the time was ripe for world government. He therefore did not join the Association of Los Alamos Scientists.

## Postwar work

Fermi became the Charles H. Swift Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago on 1 July 1945, although he did not depart the Los Alamos Laboratory with his family until 31 December 1945. He was elected a member of the US National Academy of Sciences in 1945. The Metallurgical Laboratory became the Argonne National Laboratory on 1 July 1946, the first of the national laboratories established by the Manhattan Project. The short distance between Chicago and Argonne allowed Fermi to work at both places. At Argonne he continued experimental physics, investigating neutron scattering with Leona Marshall. He also discussed theoretical physics with Maria Mayer, helping her develop insights into spin–orbit coupling that would lead to her receiving the Nobel Prize.

The Manhattan Project was replaced by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) on 1 January 1947. Fermi served on the AEC General Advisory Committee, an influential scientific committee chaired by Robert Oppenheimer. He also liked to spend a few weeks each year at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he collaborated with Nicholas Metropolis, and with John von Neumann on Rayleigh–Taylor instability, the science of what occurs at the border between two fluids of different densities.

After the detonation of the first Soviet fission bomb in August 1949, Fermi, along with Isidor Rabi, wrote a strongly worded report for the committee, opposing the development of a hydrogen bomb on moral and technical grounds. Nonetheless, Fermi continued to participate in work on the hydrogen bomb at Los Alamos as a consultant. Along with Stanislaw Ulam, he calculated that not only would the amount of tritium needed for Teller's model of a thermonuclear weapon be prohibitive, but a fusion reaction could still not be assured to propagate even with this large quantity of tritium. Fermi was among the scientists who testified on Oppenheimer's behalf at the Oppenheimer security hearing in 1954 that resulted in the denial of Oppenheimer's security clearance.

In his later years, Fermi continued teaching at the University of Chicago, where he was a founder of what later became the Enrico Fermi Institute. His PhD students in the postwar period included Owen Chamberlain, Geoffrey Chew, Jerome Friedman, Marvin Goldberger, Tsung-Dao Lee, Arthur Rosenfeld and Sam Treiman. Jack Steinberger was a graduate student, and Mildred Dresselhaus was highly influenced by Fermi during the year she overlapped with him as a PhD student. Fermi conducted important research in particle physics, especially related to pions and muons. He made the first predictions of pion-nucleon resonance, relying on statistical methods, since he reasoned that exact answers were not required when the theory was wrong anyway. In a paper coauthored with Chen Ning Yang, he speculated that pions might actually be composite particles. The idea was elaborated by Shoichi Sakata. It has since been supplanted by the quark model, in which the pion is made up of quarks, which completed Fermi's model, and vindicated his approach.

Fermi wrote a paper "On the Origin of Cosmic Radiation" in which he proposed that cosmic rays arose through material being accelerated by magnetic fields in interstellar space, which led to a difference of opinion with Teller. Fermi examined the issues surrounding magnetic fields in the arms of a spiral galaxy. He mused about what is now referred to as the "Fermi paradox": the contradiction between the presumed probability of the existence of extraterrestrial life and the fact that contact has not been made.

Toward the end of his life, Fermi questioned his faith in society at large to make wise choices about nuclear technology. He said:

> Some of you may ask, what is the good of working so hard merely to collect a few facts which will bring no pleasure except to a few long-haired professors who love to collect such things and will be of no use to anybody because only few specialists at best will be able to understand them? In answer to such question[s] I may venture a fairly safe prediction.
>
> The history of science and technology has consistently taught us that scientific advances in basic understanding have sooner or later led to technical and industrial applications that have revolutionized our way of life. It seems to me improbable that this effort to get at the structure of matter should be an exception to this rule. What is less certain, and what we all fervently hope, is that man will soon grow sufficiently adult to make good use of the powers that he acquires over nature.

## Death

Fermi underwent what was called an "exploratory" operation in Billings Memorial Hospital in October 1954, after which he returned home. Fifty days later he died of inoperable stomach cancer in his home in Chicago. He was 53. Fermi suspected working near the nuclear pile involved great risk but he pressed on because the benefits outweighed the risks to his personal safety. Two of his graduate student assistants working near the pile also died of cancer.

A memorial service was held at the University of Chicago chapel, where colleagues Samuel K. Allison, Emilio Segrè, and Herbert L. Anderson spoke to mourn the loss of one of the world's "most brilliant and productive physicists." His body was interred at Oak Woods Cemetery where a private graveside service for the immediate family took place presided by a Lutheran chaplain.

## Impact and legacy

### Legacy

Fermi received numerous awards in recognition of his achievements, including the Matteucci Medal in 1926, the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1938, the Hughes Medal in 1942, the Franklin Medal in 1947, and the Rumford Prize in 1953. He was awarded the Medal for Merit in 1946 for his contribution to the Manhattan Project. Fermi was elected member of the American Philosophical Society in 1939 and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1950. The Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence, known as the Temple of Italian Glories for its many graves of artists, scientists and prominent figures in Italian history, has a plaque commemorating Fermi. In 1999, Time named Fermi on its list of the top 100 persons of the twentieth century. Fermi was widely regarded as an unusual case of a 20th-century physicist who excelled both theoretically and experimentally. Chemist and novelist C. P. Snow wrote, "if Fermi had been born a few years earlier, one could well imagine him discovering Rutherford's atomic nucleus, and then developing Bohr's theory of the hydrogen atom. If this sounds like hyperbole, anything about Fermi is likely to sound like hyperbole".

Fermi was known as an inspiring teacher and was noted for his attention to detail, simplicity, and careful preparation of his lectures. Later, his lecture notes were transcribed into books. His papers and notebooks are today in the University of Chicago. Victor Weisskopf noted how Fermi "always managed to find the simplest and most direct approach, with the minimum of complication and sophistication." He disliked complicated theories, and while he had great mathematical ability, he would never use it when the job could be done much more simply. He was famous for getting quick and accurate answers to problems that would stump other people. Later on, his method of getting approximate and quick answers through back-of-the-envelope calculations became informally known as the "Fermi method", and is widely taught.

Fermi was fond of pointing out that when Alessandro Volta was working in his laboratory, Volta had no idea where the study of electricity would lead. Fermi is generally remembered for his work on nuclear power and nuclear weapons, especially the creation of the first nuclear reactor, and the development of the first atomic and hydrogen bombs. His scientific work has stood the test of time. This includes his theory of beta decay, his work with non-linear systems, his discovery of the effects of slow neutrons, his study of pion-nucleon collisions, and his Fermi–Dirac statistics. His speculation that a pion was not a fundamental particle pointed the way towards the study of quarks and leptons.

### Things named after Fermi

Many things bear Fermi's name. These include the Fermilab particle accelerator and physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, which was renamed in his honor in 1974, and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which was named after him in 2008, in recognition of his work on cosmic rays. Three nuclear reactor installations have been named after him: the Fermi 1 and Fermi 2 nuclear power plants in Newport, Michigan, the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Power Plant at Trino Vercellese in Italy, and the RA-1 Enrico Fermi research reactor in Argentina. A synthetic element isolated from the debris of the 1952 Ivy Mike nuclear test was named fermium, in honor of Fermi's contributions to the scientific community. This makes him one of 16 scientists who have elements named after them.

Since 1956, the United States Atomic Energy Commission has named its highest honor, the Fermi Award, after him. Recipients of the award have included Otto Hahn, Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Teller and Hans Bethe.

## Publications

- (with Edoardo Amaldi)

For a full list of his papers, see pages 75–78 in ref.

## Patents

Italian-American physicist (1901–1954)

Academic staff of the Sapienza University of Rome

Academic staff of the University of Göttingen

Corresponding Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences

Fellows of the American Physical Society

Members of the American Philosophical Society

Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences

Naturalized citizens of the United States

Presidents of the American Physical Society


Paul E. Patton

Paul Edward Patton (born May 26, 1937) is an American politician who served as the 59th governor of Kentucky from 1995 to 2003. Because of a 1992 amendment to the Kentucky Constitution, he was the first governor eligible to run for a second term in office since James Garrard in 1800. Since 2013, he has been the chancellor of the University of Pikeville in Pikeville, Kentucky after serving as its president from 2010 to 2013. He also served as chairman of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education from 2009 to 2011.

After graduating from the University of Kentucky in 1959, Patton became wealthy operating coal mines for 20 years. He sold most of his coal interests in the late 1970s and entered politics, serving briefly in the cabinet of Governor John Y. Brown Jr. and chairing the state Democratic Party. In 1981, he was elected judge/executive of Pike County. He made an unsuccessful bid for lieutenant governor in 1987, but was elected in 1991, serving concurrently as lieutenant governor and secretary of economic development under Governor Brereton Jones.

Four years later, Patton was elected Governor over Larry Forgy. The major achievement of his first term was overhauling higher education, including making the state's community colleges and technical schools independent of the University of Kentucky and organizing them into the Kentucky Community and Technical College System. Shortly after Patton turned back a weak challenge to his re-election in 1999, two Democratic state senators defected to the Republican Party, giving Republicans a majority in that legislative house for the first time ever. The economic prosperity that fueled Patton's first term success faded into a recession in the early 2000s. Faced with a hostile legislature and a dire economic forecast, Patton was unable to enact much significant legislation in his second term, and his situation was exacerbated in 2002 when news of an extramarital affair and allegations of a sex-for-favors scandal broke. After initially denying the affair, Patton later admitted to it, but continued to deny using his office to benefit his mistress. Later in his term, Patton was attacked for pardoning four of his political advisers who were indicted for violating Kentucky's campaign finance laws and for allegedly abusing his patronage powers. These successive scandals derailed any further political aspirations.

## Early life and education

Patton was born in Fallsburg, Kentucky, on May 26, 1937, in a retrofitted silo with no indoor plumbing, electricity, or telephone. He was the only son of the three children born to Ward and Irene Patton. The family moved often because Ward Patton, a teacher, was assigned to a different school every year. When he was hired by a railroad in Pike County, he and his wife agreed that she would remain in Fallsburg with the children until they finished school. Patton attended Fallsburg Elementary School, a four-room schoolhouse in his hometown. He was active in the 4-H club, where he began to develop his public speaking ability. In 1951, he enrolled at Louisa High School in Louisa, Kentucky. He was an honor student, a member of the drama club, a football and baseball player, and class president during his senior year. In 1955, he graduated with the third-highest grade point average in his class of 73.

After high school, Patton attended the University of Kentucky. During the spring of 1956, he was initiated into the Kappa Sigma fraternity. Later that year he unsuccessfully sought a seat in the Student Government Association. In 1959, he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering. He was later awarded an honorary Doctor of Public Service degree from the University of Louisville.

## Career

### Coal industry

In 1959, after graduation, Patton began work as a day laborer picking slate for the Sizemore Mining Corporation that was owned by his father-in-law. In 1961, he moved to Virgie and founded the Elkhorn Coal Company with his brother-in-law. In 1972, he purchased Chapperal Coal Company and became extremely wealthy during the coal boom that resulted from the 1973 oil crisis. He sold Chapperal in 1978 and then helped develop Campbell Coal and Oil Supply into a major supply outlet in the eastern part of the state. He became a leader in the coal industry, serving on the board of directors of the Kentucky Coal Association, chairing the Board of the National Independent Coal Operators Association, and becoming a member of the Kentucky Deep Mine Safety Commission. He denounced the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969 as "right in its diagnosis of the problem, but wrong in prescription for the cure". By 1976, he had become president of the National Independent Coal Operators Association. He railed against a federal regulation that would prohibit strip mining on slopes of greater than 20 degrees, which would have effectively ended that method of mining in the Eastern Mountain Coal Fields, and lamented the economic disadvantage imposed on Kentucky coal miners by the state's coal severance tax.

Patton was regarded as more moderate than most coal operators in his relationship to labor unions. Most of his mine workers were not unionized, and those who were generally belonged to the Southern Labor Union rather than the more confrontational United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). Members of the UMWA local at Shelby Gap maintained that Patton was arrested for clipping a striking miner on a picket line with his pickup truck in the late 1970s. Local law enforcement officials claim no recollection of the incident, and there is no record of an arrest warrant against Patton or an actual arrest.

On October 18, 1976, Patton filed for divorce from Carol Cooley, saying only that their marriage was irretrievably broken. The divorce was final on February 25, 1977. Later that year, Patton married Judi Jane Conway of Pikeville, a secretary at his Kentucky Elkhorn mine. In 1973, Conway had divorced her first husband, Bill Harvey Johnson, with whom she had two children.

### Politics

Patton was introduced to politics by State Senator Kelsey Friend, who arranged for Patton to be a delegate to the 1972 Democratic National Convention. Friend also convinced Patton to help raise money for Walter "Dee" Huddleston's congressional campaign.

As the coal boom began to wane, Patton sold most of his coal interests in 1978. After a meeting with allies of his friend First District Congressman Carroll Hubbard in Madisonville on September 20, 1978, Patton considered a run for governor in 1979. However, he subsequently decided that he lacked the time to organize a campaign before the May primary election; a letter leaked to The Paducah Sun showed that he believed he was losing Hubbard's support. He joined Terry McBrayer's campaign during the primary, and after McBrayer lost, he worked to elect John Y. Brown Jr., the Democratic nominee. Brown won the election, and Patton was appointed deputy secretary of transportation. He served only three months before resigning to protest Brown's proposal for a coal severance tax.

In late 1981, Brown asked Patton to become vice-chair of the Kentucky Democratic Party. He would serve under Dale Sights of Henderson. Brown then informed Patton that there had been a change of plans: he had decided to appoint his father, former U.S. Representative John Y. Brown Sr. to the chair, instead of Sights. Brown's advisers convinced him that this would be politically damaging; finally, Brown appointed Patton chair, with June Taylor, daughter of former governor Ruby Laffoon, as vice-chair. The announcement was a surprise to most political observers, as Sights had been the odds-on favorite for the chairmanship. Patton served as chairman until 1983. During his tenure, he learned much about politics from Taylor and was introduced to Andrew "Skipper" Martin of Louisville, who would later become an important adviser and ally.

#### Pike County judge/executive

In 1981, Patton ran for county judge/executive of Pike County. On the way to a victory in the Democratic primary, he outspent incumbent Wayne Rutherford \$191,252 to \$49,000. In the general election, he garnered more than 75 percent of the vote against Republican challenger Jim Polley.

Within six months of his election, Patton instituted the state's first mandatory, county-wide garbage collection program, to combat illegal garbage dumping, which was rampant in the county. The program won Patton statewide acclaim. When Patton sought re-election in 1985, he again faced Rutherford in the Democratic primary. Rutherford campaigned against the garbage-collection program, promising to repeal it if elected. This stance may have hurt him, because although some county residents resented the mandatory fee for garbage pick-up, many more recognized the benefits, as illegal dump sites became less common. Patton won the primary again, and went on to re-election. However, he won both races by much smaller margins than in 1981 (2,524 votes in the primary and 3,916 votes in the general election).

In his second term, Patton initiated an oil recycling program and established a work program for welfare mothers in day care centers. He oversaw construction of a new jail and a \$5 million renovation to the county courthouse. He brought the county its first manufacturing company and stopped the practice of giving away gravel, drains, and bridge lumber from district warehouses to private citizens. Among his other priorities as judge/executive were the construction of rural roads and recreation facilities.

In 1987, Patton ran for Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky. In a crowded primary, his 130,713 votes placed him third behind Brereton Jones (189,058 votes) and Attorney General David L. Armstrong (147,718 votes), but ahead of state senator David Boswell and Superintendent of Public Instruction Alice McDonald. In the most expensive primary in Kentucky history to that point, Patton spent more than \$2 million of his personal fortune, but was outspent by Jones, who committed more than \$3 million to the campaign. By comparison, Martha Layne Collins had spent \$140,000 to win the office in 1979 and Steve Beshear \$250,000 to win it in 1983.

Following his defeat, Patton returned to Pike County. In 1989 he was re-elected for a third term as judge/executive, receiving over 70 percent of the vote in a three-way Democratic primary and subsequently winning the general election by nearly a three-to-one margin. He immediately began preparing for another run for lieutenant governor in 1991. In the earlier campaign, the UMWA had been vociferously opposed to Patton because employees in his coal mines had been affiliated with the Southern Labor Union. Skipper Martin introduced him to Teamsters leaders, and Patton worked with them to unionize Pike County employees. He also worked with Kelsey Friend to pass the Kentucky Rural Economic Development Act, a measure giving financial incentives to companies that located in economically depressed rural counties.

#### Lieutenant governor

Patton sought the office of lieutenant governor again in 1991. In a crowded seven-candidate field in the Democratic primary, the front runner was Attorney General Fred Cowan of Louisville. Other candidates included Steve Collins, son of former governor Martha Layne Collins, and former Speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives Bobby H. Richardson. Just days before the primary, it was reported that Cowan's campaign had sought funds from a company that his office was investigating for criminal conduct. Patton beat Cowan by a margin of 146,102 votes to 104,337.

In the general election, Patton faced Republican Eugene Goss. Goss criticized Patton for announcing that, if elected, he would seek the governor's office at the expiration of his term. Goss insisted that he would not seek the governorship if elected, and maintained that using the lieutenant governor's post as a stepping stone to the governor's office was a betrayal of the office and its authority. Goss ran an unorthodox campaign, limiting individual contributions to his campaign to \$300 and refusing to run television commercials. Patton went on to a lopsided victory in the general election, winning 514,023 votes to Goss's 250,857.

Upon his election as lieutenant governor, Patton resigned his office as Pike County judge-executive. While presiding over the Senate in the 1991 legislative session, Patton voted against a mandatory seat belt law, breaking a 19–19 tie. He was the last Kentucky lieutenant governor to preside over the Kentucky Senate; a 1992 amendment to the state constitution created a new position, President of the Kentucky Senate, and relieved the lieutenant governor of his duties in that body.

In November 1991, Governor Brereton Jones appointed Patton as secretary of economic development, making Patton the first lieutenant governor to serve as an appointed cabinet secretary. In this capacity, he encouraged the use of tax incentives to bring new industry to the state. Bill Bishop, a journalist for the Lexington Herald-Leader, criticized these incentives, saying that Patton too often used them to attract low-wage jobs. In response, Patton wrote a series of essays; while he never published them in the newspaper, he later compiled them into a book entitled Kentucky's Approach to Economic Development. He also reorganized Kentucky economic development efforts, securing the adoption of four new development incentive programs and establishing the Kentucky Economic Development Partnership.

### 1995 gubernatorial election

At the expiration of his term as lieutenant governor in 1995, Patton announced his candidacy for governor. The 1995 gubernatorial election was novel in several ways, following a 1992 constitutional amendment. It was the first election in Kentucky history in which the governor and lieutenant governor were elected as a ticket. Another new provision stated that if no candidate received at least 40 percent of the vote in his or her party's primary, a runoff election would occur between the top two candidates. Most significantly, for the first time in Kentucky history the winners of each race would be allowed to succeed themselves in office and serve another term. Also, as a result of campaign finance reform passed under Governor Jones, candidates would receive public campaign financing and would have their campaign spending capped, negating the advantage of wealthy candidates.

Patton chose Steve Henry, a surgeon and county commissioner from Louisville, as his running mate. His major opposition in the Democratic primary came from secretary of state Bob Babbage and President Pro Tempore of the Kentucky Senate John "Eck" Rose. Although sitting governor Brereton Jones did not officially endorse Patton, Rose referred to Jones as Patton's "mentor". Rose charged that, like Jones, Patton would not take a hard stand on the issues; referring to a nickname given to Jones in the 1991 campaign, Rose remarked "If you have liked Jell-O Jones, then you are going to be in a position to love Puddin' Paul Patton." Particularly odious to Rose was that Patton had publicly supported collective wage bargaining for public employees, but had declared that he would not fight for it in the upcoming 1996 legislative session. Though Babbage and Rose were political veterans and solid campaigners, Patton won 152,203 votes in the primary, well over the 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff. Babbage ran second with 81,352 votes and Rose was third with 71,740 votes. Two other candidates split the remaining 33,344 votes.

Patton entered the general election as a perceived underdog. The previous year, Republicans had taken over both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, and for the first time in decades a majority of Kentucky's congressional delegation was Republican. State Democrats were also tainted by the Operation Boptrot investigation that sent many of their legislators, including House Speaker Don Blandford, to prison for political corruption. With Democrats in charge of state government for the previous 24 years, Patton feared that the "time for a change" argument would resonate with voters.

Patton's opponent, Republican Larry Forgy, hurt his campaign by aligning himself with the Christian right, alienating moderates in both parties, particularly in Louisville. He also openly opposed the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA), passed in 1990 during the administration of Wallace G. Wilkinson. Republican supporters of education reform deserted his campaign and helped form a bi-partisan coalition supporting KERA. Traditional Democratic voting blocs such as organized labor and African-Americans turned out in force for Patton. To further undermine Forgy, Patton reminded voters of the budget cuts by Congressional Republicans to programs affecting the elderly. These issues ultimately delivered a Patton victory of 500,787 votes to 479,227. It was the closest Kentucky gubernatorial election in 32 years, and marked the first time an eastern Kentuckian had won the governorship since Bert T. Combs in 1959.

### Governor of Kentucky

#### First term (1995–1999)

Though Patton had ambitions to enact education reform early in his administration, his financial adviser, James R. Ramsey, convinced him to propose a conservative budget in the first legislative session. The two developed a plan to modernize the state government, making it more efficient. State employees were leery of increased efficiency, believing it was a code word for cutting state jobs. Patton dispelled this notion by promising no involuntary layoffs. Patton also anticipated difficulty persuading legislators to invest an estimated \$100 million in equipment and processes to realize improved efficiency. However, when economists projected a budget surplus for 1996, Patton agreed to invest half of it in capital projects in exchange for using the other half for measures to improve government efficiency. Patton formed an Office for Technology and made improvements in the compatibility and interoperability of the state's computer systems that were recommended by his son, Chris. Investments of \$23.3 million yielded a return of \$300 million in state revenue. By the time Patton's efficiency program was fully implemented, the state was realizing an annual return of 75 cents for every dollar initially invested.

In December 1996, Patton called a special legislative session to consider the issue of worker's compensation reform. Both Patton and the state's legislators believed that the generous benefits provided under Kentucky state law created an unfavorable business climate in the state. The reform measures adopted in the special session included a substantial reduction in benefits, including those to coal miners who developed black lung disease. Patton's support of this measure alienated labor leaders, especially in eastern Kentucky's coal mining communities – which had previously been among his strongest supporters. As the law began to take effect, Patton himself agreed that it had gone too far, and his Secretary of Labor worked with representatives from organized labor to draft changes in the law. Those changes were eventually made in the 2002 legislative session.

##### Education reform

In the 1997 legislature, Patton began his mission of reforming the state's system of higher education. Noting that the state's community colleges, under the control of the University of Kentucky, and technical schools, under the control of the state government, were too often competing with each other in the same community, he proposed removing the community colleges from the university's control. Part of the plan was upgrading the technical schools to colleges, allowing them to award associate's degrees, not just diplomas and certificates. Control of the community and technical colleges would be invested in a new entity, the Kentucky Community and Technical College System. Patton believed that severing the community colleges from the University of Kentucky would allow the university to reallocate resources toward becoming a "Top 20" research university in the nation. The plan also charged the University of Louisville with becoming a nationally recognized urban university. The state's Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE) would help eliminate duplication of programs among the colleges and oversee the improvements in the state's two major universities. In addition, the CPE was to oversee the formation of a "Commonwealth Virtual University" that would serve as a clearinghouse for all the distance learning opportunities offered by the colleges and universities of Kentucky. The new CPE president, Gordon K. Davies, appointed former University of Kentucky engineering faculty and then Databeam Corp. co-founder Lee T. Todd to chair the new Distance Learning Task Force which created the Kentucky Virtual University (now the Kentucky Virtual Campus) and the Kentucky Virtual Library, and worked with the Kentucky Department of Education to create the Kentucky Virtual High School (now the Kentucky Virtual Schools). Patton's plan was outlined in the Kentucky Postsecondary Education Improvement Act of 1997, nicknamed House Bill 1.

While supported by the state's smaller, regional universities, House Bill 1 immediately drew the ire of University of Kentucky president Charles T. Wethington Jr. Before becoming university president, Wethington had administered the community-college system. Most of the community colleges and the constituencies in their communities also opposed the plan. The university and the community colleges ran advertisements encouraging opposition to the plan; Patton characterized these ads as "mean". Patton was disappointed when Greg Stumbo, a leader in the Kentucky House of Representatives and former advocate of an independent community-college system, announced his opposition the plan. Stumbo represented the community of Prestonsburg, an eastern Kentucky coal mining town, and Patton surmised that he was still angry about the worker's compensation bill. Prestonsburg was also the home of Prestonsburg Community College (now Big Sandy Community and Technical College). In the face of this opposition, Patton negotiated with individual legislators until he was convinced that he had a majority in both houses of the Kentucky General Assembly. He then pushed forward and was able to get the legislation passed.

In addition to this victory, Patton also secured passage of other higher education measures. In the 1998 legislative session, he proposed a \$100 million bond issue to fund the Research Challenge Trust Fund, a fund that the state's universities could tap to hire researchers for special projects. The program, later nicknamed "Bucks for Brains", required the universities to match any resources leveraged from the fund dollar-for-dollar. The 1998 legislature also approved funding for the Kentucky Educational Excellence Scholarship (KEES) program, which channeled money from the Kentucky Lottery into a special fund for scholarships. To qualify for a KEES scholarship, students have to score at least a 2.5 grade point average in high school, and attend a college or university in Kentucky. Awards are made on a sliding scale, with factors such as high school grades, scores on college entrance exams, and continued academic success in college affecting the amount of the award, which is renewable for up to eight college terms.

Patton's education reforms were not confined to higher education. He also sought to make changes to the Kentucky Education Reform Act that would mollify its critics without gutting the law itself. One of the major complaints regarding KERA was the inability to compare the scores to those from other states to determine progress relative to the rest of the nation. Opponents of KERA in the Senate passed a bill to eliminate the testing until something better could be implemented. In the House, a more moderate measure was advanced, that added a component to the testing system that would allow students to be compared to national norms. Patton supported the House version of the bill, which ultimately emerged from the conference committee and was enacted into law. The administration's strong support of KERA kept the legislation from being seriously challenged again during Patton's term. One notable exception occurred in 2000 when legislators tried to repeal the anti-nepotism provision regarding school hiring. The measure passed both houses of the legislature, but Patton vetoed it.

The passage of his higher education reforms led to Patton becoming the chairman of the Southern Regional Education Board from 1997 to 1998. In 1999 he was chosen chairman of the Education Commission of the States. Other educational organizations then sought Patton's leadership; he chaired the National Education Goals Panel and was chosen by the U.S. Secretary of Education to lead a commission to study the high-school senior year.

In the 1998 legislative session, the state enjoyed a \$200 million budget surplus. Patton was able to distribute this surplus to legislative allies, giving him substantial leverage for his proposals. As one legislative leader opined, "Money buys a lot of silence." Legislators were also reluctant to oppose the administration for fear that Patton would be re-elected in 1999. Consequently, Patton was able to gain approval of a very ambitious legislative agenda in 1998, including tougher criminal laws, improved economic development, reform for Medicaid, and further reform of the higher-education system. Patton also used some of the budget surplus to provide computers for public classrooms; because of Patton's commitment to education, Kentucky was the first state in the nation to have every public school classroom wired to the Internet. Once this was accomplished, Patton charged his education secretary, Ed Ford, with developing the Kentucky Virtual High School, a system of distance education that would allow students in smaller high schools in Kentucky to have access to courses in foreign languages and other subjects offered only at larger high schools. The virtual high school was brought online in January 2000.

The last plank in Patton's education platform was the improvement of adult education. This issue allowed him to work with a political foe, Republican senator David L. Williams, who had been pushing for additional resources for adult education since 1997. In 1998, Patton personally chaired a task force on adult education, and 18 months later, the task force's recommendations were incorporated into a bill sponsored by Williams. The bill, which increased and equalized funding and tied continuing funds to successful performance by individual adult-education programs, passed both houses of the General Assembly unanimously. By 2003, the number of adults completing their GED rose by 17 percent, and the number of GED recipients who matriculated to college rose from 13 percent to 18 percent.

##### Criminal justice reform

Also on Patton's agenda was a reformation of Kentucky's juvenile justice system. Under Brereton Jones, because of its system of housing and treating juvenile offenders, Kentucky had been one of only two states unable to qualify for federal grants. Among the problems cited by the Department of Justice were abuse of juveniles by state employees, and failure to hold juvenile and adult offenders separately from each other. Governor Jones entered into a consent decree to ameliorate the situation, but his term expired before he could meaningfully address the terms of the decree. Patton went beyond the terms of the decree by implementing mandatory training for state employees who dealt with juvenile offenders, and by setting up a hotline for juveniles to report abuse anonymously. He shifted the responsibility for housing juveniles from local communities to the state, constructing nine new juvenile detention centers. In January 2001, Attorney General Janet Reno proclaimed Kentucky's juvenile justice system a model for the nation.

Patton did not stop with the juvenile justice system, however. He encouraged passage of a bill that required that violent offenders serve at least 85 percent of their sentences (up from the 50 percent previously mandated), while requiring that judges consider home incarceration for first-time, non-violent offenders. The bill also allowed judges to sentence criminals to life without parole; previously, life without parole for 25 years had been the harshest non-capital sentence. The bill passed the legislature in 1999.

#### 1999 gubernatorial election

Due to the constitutional amendment enacted under previous governor Brereton Jones, Patton became the first governor in more than 200 years eligible to succeed himself in office. James Garrard had served consecutive terms in 1796 and 1800, but the Kentucky Constitution of 1799 barred any future governor from being elected to consecutive terms. In 1796, Garrard was chosen as governor by an electoral college, not by popular vote, and thus Patton was the first Kentucky governor to be popularly elected for consecutive terms.

Patton was unopposed in the Democratic primary. Republicans nominated Peppy Martin, who many considered a weak candidate. In fact, Patton's old Republican foe, David Williams, announced he would vote for Patton over Martin. In the general election Patton garnered 352,099 votes, 60.6 percent of the total. Martin finished with 128,788 votes, with 88,930 votes going to third-party candidate Gatewood Galbraith. When asked why the Republicans had chosen such a weak challenger, Patton opined "They mistakenly believed I could not be beaten. They made a mistake."

#### Second term as governor

After the gubernatorial election in 1999, Louisville senator Dan Seum announced he would change his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican, citing his conservative voting history, including opposition to the state lottery, KERA, and abortion. This switch, which Patton learned of too late to intervene, equalized the number of Democrats and Republicans in the Senate. Six weeks later, Paducah senator Bob Leeper announced he would also change his party affiliation. Patton traveled to Paducah and met with Leeper, but was unable to convince him to remain a Democrat. Leeper had a history of conflict with Democratic Senate President Larry Saunders, but he insisted his party switch, like Seum's, was based on political philosophy. Leeper's switch gave Republicans a majority in the Senate for the first time in the state's history. David Williams was elected President of the Senate, and held the Republican majority together effectively. Consequently, Patton faced a difficult task in maneuvering his agenda through a divided General Assembly.

The rift between Williams and Patton became permanent during negotiations over the state budget in 1999. Patton proposed to Williams a 7-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax, with 1 cent of every 7 dedicated to counties with the most unpaved roads – usually heavily Republican counties ignored by past Democratic governors. Patton claimed Williams told him he had 10 votes in the Senate for the increase. But gas prices spiked before the measure came to a vote in the Senate, and Williams failed to deliver his votes after the House passed the tax. The administration and key Republican senators reached a compromise that saved Patton's budget with tax changes that were mostly revenue-neutral. Patton believed Williams had deliberately misled him, however, and the two never reconciled.

Another issue confronting both Patton and the legislature was how to spend federal funds from the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement. Kentucky's share of the settlement totaled \$3.5 billion over 25 years. Because tobacco was a major cash crop in Kentucky, Patton proposed that half of the settlement be used to diversify the state's farmers' crops. One-fourth of the money would support health care and anti-smoking efforts. The remaining one-fourth would address early-childhood care and education, a cause important to Patton's daughter, Nicki, an early-childhood educator.

In November 2000, Kentucky voters approved a constitutional amendment providing a shorter legislative session in odd-numbered years with longer sessions in even-numbered years. Most of Patton's proposals failed in the 2000 and 2001 legislative sessions. The economic boom that had provided ample funds for his programs during the first term slowed in 2001, and by 2002 the state was \$800 million short of meeting its budget. In 2002, Republicans in the General Assembly called for an end to public campaign finance, as an economy measure. Calling it "welfare for politicians", Republicans estimated that abolishing public campaign finance could save the state \$30 million. Ultimately, the issue derailed the biennial budget during the regular legislative session. In April 2002, Patton called a special legislative session to approve the budget, but legislators were still unable to agree. For the first time in the state's history, the fiscal year began without a budget. This left Patton to run the state government for a year without a budget in place.

Besides the budget, another measure that failed to pass in the 2002 session was a bill to eliminate the death penalty for juveniles. The precedent for the juvenile death penalty had been set in the 1989 Supreme Court case of Stanford v. Kentucky, wherein the court ruled that Kevin Stanford could be executed for the 1981 rape, sodomy, and murder of a gas station attendant in Jefferson County, Kentucky, even though Stanford was only 17 at the time of the crime. In 2003, Patton announced he would commute Stanford's sentence. Patton did oversee the execution of two adult prisoners, that of Harold McQueen Jr. in 1997 and Eddie Lee Harper in 1999, making him the first Kentucky governor to do so since 1962.

##### Tina Conner sex scandal

Already plagued by an uncooperative legislature, Patton's situation was exacerbated in 2002 when it was revealed that, during his first term in office, he had engaged in an extramarital affair with a woman named Tina Conner. According to Conner, the operator of Birchtree Healthcare nursing home in Clinton, Kentucky, the relationship ended in 1999, but Patton continued to call her until she completely broke off the affair in October 2001. After initially denying the affair, Patton tearfully admitted to it during a televised press conference at the Kentucky History Center on September 20, 2002. The story made Patton the object of state and national ridicule, the subject of jokes by Jay Leno on The Tonight Show. The Louisville Courier-Journal called for Patton's resignation, stating that he was "too damaged as a moral authority to lead ... [and] too powerless as a politician to compel."

Conner alleged that Patton arranged regulatory favors for the nursing home while the affair was ongoing. Two months after Conner said she ended the affair, Birchtree Healthcare was cited by state regulators for numerous violations of health and safety rules. By July 2002, the state had pulled all Medicare and Medicaid payments from the facility, which soon went bankrupt. Conner further alleged that the state investigation of Birchtree was retaliation by Patton for her ending of the affair.

In a separate incident, Conner claimed that Patton helped a construction company she owned obtain certification as a disadvantaged business, which gave the company special preference when bidding for state contracts.

The affair appeared to take a toll on Patton's marriage; his wife Judi was reported to be living in separate quarters in the governor's mansion and was rarely seen in public with him.

Patton had risen to national prominence, successively chairing the Southern Governors Association, the Democratic Governors Association, and the National Governors Association (NGA). He was serving as NGA chair at the time the Tina Conner scandal broke, and planned to resign his chairmanship in November 2002. Nevertheless, the other governors rallied around him, convincing him to remain in the position. Together with his Republican vice-chair, Idaho's Dirk Kempthorne, Patton led the NGA effectively, securing federal funding to shore up state budgets and keeping the caucus from a partisan split in a vote over Medicaid.

Conner filed suit against Patton in September 2002. By late 2003, all but one of her charges against Patton had been dismissed; the remaining charge alleged "outrageous" conduct. In March 2003, the state's Executive Branch Ethics Commission investigated Conner's claims and accused Patton of four ethics violations, charging that he "used or attempted to use his official position" to provide favors for Conner. The favors included contacting the state transportation secretary with regard to Conner's disadvantaged business application, recommending a promotion for an officer who allegedly helped Conner avoid paying a traffic ticket, appointing Conner to the board of directors for the Kentucky Lottery, and appointing Conner's then-husband to the Agricultural Development Board. Patton claimed that the favors he requested for Conner were the same kind of favors that he had requested for dozens of influential constituents. He also claimed he had not profited financially from any of the requested favors. He maintained that his attitude toward constituent services was "If you can do so legally and ethically, help them."

Tina Conner's final claim against Patton – for "outrage" – was dismissed by a judge in May 2006. In October 2006, Conner filed a second lawsuit against Patton alleging misconduct by a public official and government oppression; a Franklin County judge dismissed the suit, claiming it was an attempt by Conner to re-litigate the claims from her first suit.

##### Loss of legislative influence

Because of the deteriorating national economic situation, Kentucky faced a severe budget shortfall in 2003. Patton proposed an overhaul of the state tax system, whereby tax revenue would keep pace with the state's eventual economic recovery. However, such reform would necessarily have meant tax increases, and with the 2003 gubernatorial election looming, legislators from both parties stuck strictly to a pledge not to raise taxes. Consequently, in the 2003 legislative session, members of the General Assembly crafted a budget that completely disregarded any input from Patton. The budget included repealing the campaign finance reform bill passed a decade earlier. Patton conceded "I have lost any ability to influence the legislature."

##### Patronage accusations

During his final months in office, Patton drew criticism for abusing his patronage power. Critics charged that he had appointed several of his family and friends who were in non-merit system jobs to merit system positions, increasing their chances of being retained when a new administration took over. These charges were particularly damaging because, earlier in the year, the General Assembly had ordered Patton to cut 800 non-merit positions to help balance the budget. The Lexington Herald-Leader opined that these charges were more serious than those of the Conner affair. Patton maintained that his friends had followed proper personnel protocol in applying for and securing merit positions.

##### Campaign finance pardons

In June 2003, Patton issued pardons to four men who were under indictment for violating campaign finance laws during the 1995 gubernatorial race. The indictments stemmed from charges by then-candidate Larry Forgy that Patton had skirted campaign finance laws by coordinating expenditures with the Teamsters and the state Democratic Party. A Franklin County grand jury returned the indictments in 1998, but a circuit court judge dismissed them in 1999 on grounds that the campaign finance law was too vague. An appeals court reversed that decision the following year, and in 2003, the Kentucky Supreme Court upheld the indictments by a vote of 5–1. The Supreme Court of the United States refused to hear an appeal on June 13, 2003. Two days later, Patton issued pardons for all four men. State attorney general Ben Chandler lamented that the pardons would eliminate the possibility of determining whether Patton won the 1995 contest "honestly and openly".

### Later career

Patton had publicly stated that he was planning a run against Republican U.S. Senator Jim Bunning in 2004, but the scandals that plagued him near the end of his administration derailed those plans. He retired to Pikeville, Kentucky, after the election of his successor, Republican Ernie Fletcher. He became a member of the First Presbyterian Church of Pikeville, a member of the Big Sandy Regional Economic Development Board, and chairman of the Pikeville/Pike County Industrial and Economic Authority.

Governor Ernie Fletcher renamed a section of U.S. Route 119 in eastern Kentucky as the Paul E. Patton Highway at a ceremony on October 30, 2008. On February 1, 2009, Patton was chosen chairman of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE). On August 12, 2009, he was announced as the next president of Pikeville College (now the University of Pikeville). In September 2009, the Executive Branch Ethics Commission issued an advisory opinion that Patton could serve in both roles without a significant conflict of interest because the CPE wields scant oversight of Kentucky's private colleges. Patton was advised to allow someone other than himself to be the official liaison between the University of Pikeville and the CPE and to recuse himself from CPE discussions on matters "that directly involve his private institution or that would affect his institution differently than any other similarly situated private postsecondary institution."

### University of Pikeville

Patton was formally installed as president of the University of Pikeville on February 16, 2010. He also serves as a Distinguished Visiting Lecturer in Public Policy and Leadership. As president, Patton oversaw the construction of the Expo Center, a new facility to house the university's indoor sports; in 2011, the center's basketball court was named Paul E. Patton Court.

In late 2011, Patton announced that he and Speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives Greg Stumbo would ask the General Assembly to consider adding the University of Pikeville as the ninth state-supported university in the Kentucky university system. On December 30, 2011, he announced his resignation from the Council on Postsecondary Education to avoid any potential accusations of a conflict of interest regarding the proposal in the 2012 General Assembly.

In 2013, Patton announced he would step down as president of the university and instead serve as chancellor. Because of his longstanding support of the university's athletics programs, he was inducted into the university's Athletics Hall of Fame in 2014. In January 2015, the university announced it would move its teacher training program out of the College of Arts and Sciences, creating the new Patton College of Education. The college was scheduled to open for the fall 2015 semester.

## Personal life

Following his sophomore year of college, he married Carol Cooley, daughter of a Floyd County, Kentucky, coal mine operator. They had two children together – Nikki and Christopher. Patton borrowed money from his father-in-law to finish his education.

## See also

American politician

American businesspeople in the coal industry

Presidents of the University of Pikeville

University of Kentucky College of Engineering alumni