Laura Fermi

Who was Laura Fermi?

Laura Capon Fermi was an Italian-born writer and political activist, and the wife of Nobel Prize physicist Enrico Fermi.

Laura Capon was born in Rome in 1907. Capon met Enrico Fermi while she was a student in general science at the University of Rome. The couple married in 1928.

They had two children: a daughter, Nella, and a son, Giulio, named after Enrico's older brother, who had died in 1915.

In 1938, the Fermis emigrated to the United States to escape the politics of the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini; Laura was Jewish. They traveled to Stockholm to receive Fermi's Nobel prize, and left from Stockholm for the United States. They were naturalized as Americans in 1944.

After Enrico died of stomach cancer in 1954, Laura became a writer and a peace activist. She published a book about her life with Enrico, Atoms in the Family, the same year he died. She herself died in 1977.