The Enrico Fermi Award is a scientific award conferred by the

President of the United States The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president directs the Federal government of the United States#Executive branch, executive branch of the Federal government of t ...

. It is awarded to honor scientists of international stature for their lifetime achievement in the development, use or production of

energy Energy () is the physical quantity, quantitative physical property, property that is transferred to a physical body, body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of Work (thermodynamics), work and in the form of heat and l ...

. It was established in 1956 by the Atomic Energy Commission in memorial of Italian-American physicist

Enrico Fermi Enrico Fermi (; 29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954) was an Italian and naturalized American physicist, renowned for being the creator of the world's first artificial nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1, and a member of the Manhattan Project ...

and his work in the development of

nuclear power Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced by ...

. The award has been administered through the

Department of Energy A ministry of energy or department of energy is a government department in some countries that typically oversees the production of fuel and electricity; in the United States, however, it manages nuclear weapons development and conducts energy-rela ...

since its establishment in 1977. The recipient of the award receives $100,000, a certificate signed by the President and the

Secretary of Energy The United States secretary of energy is the head of the United States Department of Energy, a member of the Cabinet of the United States and fifteenth in the presidential line of succession. The position was created on October 1, 1977, when P ...

and a gold medal featuring the likeness of Enrico Fermi.

Winners

*1956 –

John von Neumann John von Neumann ( ; ; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian and American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist and engineer. Von Neumann had perhaps the widest coverage of any mathematician of his time, in ...

*1957 –

Ernest O. Lawrence Ernest Orlando Lawrence (August 8, 1901 – August 27, 1958) was an American accelerator physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 for his invention of the cyclotron. He is known for his work on uranium-isotope separation for ...

*1958 – Eugene P. Wigner *1959 –

Glenn T. Seaborg Glenn Theodore Seaborg ( ; April 19, 1912February 25, 1999) was an American chemist whose involvement in the synthesis, discovery and investigation of ten transuranium elements earned him a share of the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His work i ...

*1961 – Hans A. Bethe *1962 –

Edward Teller Edward Teller (; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian and American Theoretical physics, theoretical physicist and chemical engineer who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" and one of the creators of ...

*1963 –

J. Robert Oppenheimer J. Robert Oppenheimer (born Julius Robert Oppenheimer ; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physics, theoretical physicist who served as the director of the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World ...

*1964 –

Hyman G. Rickover Hyman G. Rickover (27 January 1900 – 8 July 1986) was an admiral in the United States Navy. He directed the original development of naval nuclear propulsion and controlled its operations for three decades as director of the U.S. Naval Reacto ...

*1966 –

Lise Meitner Elise Lise Meitner ( ; ; 7 November 1878 – 27 October 1968) was an Austrian-Swedish nuclear physicist who was instrumental in the discovery of nuclear fission. After completing her doctoral research in 1906, Meitner became the second woman ...

;

Otto Hahn Otto Hahn (; 8 March 1879 – 28 July 1968) was a German chemist who was a pioneer in the field of radiochemistry. He is referred to as the father of nuclear chemistry and discoverer of nuclear fission, the science behind nuclear reactors and ...

;

Fritz Strassmann Friedrich Wilhelm Strassmann (; 22 February 1902 – 22 April 1980) was a German chemist who, with Otto Hahn in December 1938, identified the element barium as a product of the bombardment of uranium with neutrons. Their observation was the key ...

*1968 –

John A. Wheeler John Archibald Wheeler (July 9, 1911April 13, 2008) was an American theoretical physicist. He was largely responsible for reviving interest in general relativity in the United States after World War II. Wheeler also worked with Niels Bohr to e ...

*1969 –

Walter Zinn Walter Henry Zinn (December 10, 1906 – February 14, 2000) was a Canadian-born American nuclear physicist who was the first director of the Argonne National Laboratory from 1946 to 1956. He worked at the Manhattan Project's Metallurgical Labor ...

*1970 – Norris E. Bradbury *1971 –

Shields Warren Shields Warren (February 26, 1898 – July 1, 1980) was an American pathologist. He was among the first to study the pathology of radioactive fallout.Stafford L. Warren *1972 –

Manson Benedict Manson Benedict (October 9, 1907 – September 18, 2006) was an American nuclear engineer and a professor of nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). From 1958 to 1968, he was the chairman of the advisory committ ...

*1976 –

William L. Russell William is a masculine given name of Germanic origin. It became popular in England after the Norman conquest in 1066,All Things William"Meaning & Origin of the Name"/ref> and remained so throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern era. It is ...

*1978 – Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky; Harold M. Agnew *1980 – Rudolf E. Peierls; Alvin M. Weinberg *1981 – W. Bennett Lewis *1982 –

Herbert L. Anderson Herbert Lawrence Anderson (May 24, 1914 – July 16, 1988) was an American nuclear physicist who was Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago. He contributed to the Manhattan Project. He was also a member of the team which made the fi ...

;

Seth Neddermeyer Seth Henry Neddermeyer (September 16, 1907 – January 29, 1988) was an American physicist who co-discovered the muon, and later championed the implosion-type nuclear weapon while working on the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos Laborator ...

*1983 –

Alexander Hollaender Alexander Hollaender (9 December 1898 – 6 December 1986) was one of the world's leading researchers in radiation biology and in genetic mutations. In 1983 he was given the Enrico Fermi Award by the United States Department of Energy for his cont ...

;

John H. Lawrence John Hundale Lawrence (January 7, 1904 – September 7, 1991) was an American physicist and physician best known for pioneering the field of nuclear medicine. Background John Hundale Lawrence was born in Canton, South Dakota. His parents, Carl Gu ...

*1984 –

Robert R. Wilson Robert Rathbun Wilson (March 4, 1914 – January 16, 2000) was an American physicist known for his work on the Manhattan Project during World War II, as a sculptor, and as an architect of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), w ...

; Georges Vendryes *1985 –

Norman Rasmussen Norman C. Rasmussen (November 12, 1927 – July 18, 2003) was an American physicist. Biography Rasmussen was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He grew up on a dairy farm as the fifth of six brothers. He attended public school in Hershey, Pennsyl ...

;

Marshall Rosenbluth Marshall Nicholas Rosenbluth (5 February 1927 – 28 September 2003) was an American plasma physicist and member of the National Academy of Sciences, and member of the American Philosophical Society. In 1997 he was awarded the National Medal of ...

*1986 –

Ernest Courant Ernest David Courant (March 26, 1920 – April 21, 2020) was an American accelerator physicist and a fundamental contributor to modern large-scale particle accelerator concepts. His most notable discovery was his 1952 work with Milton S. Living ...

;

M. Stanley Livingston Milton Stanley Livingston (May 25, 1905 – August 25, 1986) was an American accelerator physicist, co-inventor of the cyclotron with Ernest Lawrence, and co-discoverer with Ernest Courant and Hartland Snyder of the strong focusing principle, ...

*1987 – Luis Alvarez; Gerald F. Tape *1988 – Richard B. Setlow; Victor F. Weisskopf *1990 – George A. Cowan; Robley D. Evans *1992 – Harold Brown; John S. Foster, Jr.;

Leon M. Lederman Leon Max Lederman (July 15, 1922 – October 3, 2018) was an American experimental physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1988, along with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, for research on neutrinos. He also received the Wolf Pr ...

*1993 – Liane B. Russell;

Freeman Dyson Freeman John Dyson (15 December 1923 – 28 February 2020) was a British-American theoretical physics, theoretical physicist and mathematician known for his works in quantum field theory, astrophysics, random matrix, random matrices, math ...

*1995 –

Ugo Fano Ugo Fano (July 28, 1912 – February 13, 2001) was an Italian American physicist, notable for contributions to theoretical physics. Biography Ugo Fano was born into a wealthy Jewish family in Turin, Italy. His father was Gino Fano, a professo ...

; Martin D. Kamen *1996 – Mortimer M. Elkind; H. Rodney Withers; Richard L. Garwin *1998 –

Maurice Goldhaber Maurice Goldhaber (April 18, 1911 – May 11, 2011) was an American physicist, known for the 1957 (with Lee Grodzins and ) that established that neutrinos have negative helicity. Early life and childhood He was born on April 18, 1911, in L ...

; Michael E. Phelps *2000 – Sheldon Datz;

Sidney D. Drell Sidney David Drell (September 13, 1926 – December 21, 2016) was an American theoretical physics, theoretical physicist and arms control expert. At the time of his death, he was professor, professor emeritus at the SLAC National Accelerator ...

; Herbert F. York *2003 – John N. Bahcall; Raymond Davis, Jr.; Seymour Sack *2005 – Arthur H. Rosenfeld *2009 –

John B. Goodenough John Bannister Goodenough ( ; July 25, 1922 – June 25, 2023) was an American materials scientist, a solid-state physicist, and a Nobel laureate in chemistry. From 1986 he was a professor of Materials Science, Electrical Engineering and Mechani ...

;

Siegfried Hecker Siegfried S. Hecker (born October 2, 1943) is an American metallurgist and nuclear scientist. He served as Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1986 to 1997 and is now affiliated with Stanford University, where he is research profe ...

*2012 –

Mildred Dresselhaus Mildred Spiewak Dresselhaus''Mildred Dresselhaus'' was elected in 197 ...

;

Burton Richter Burton Richter (March 22, 1931 – July 18, 2018) was an American physicist. He led the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) team which co-discovered the J/ψ meson in 1974, alongside the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) team led by S ...

*2013 –

Andrew Sessler Andrew Marienhoff Sessler (December 11, 1928 – April 17, 2014) was an American physicist, academic (University of California, Berkeley), former director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (1973–1980), humanitarian and former presiden ...

;

Allen J. Bard Allen Joseph Bard (December 18, 1933 – February 11, 2024) was an American chemist. He was the Hackerman-Welch Regents Chair Professor and director of the Center for Electrochemistry at the University of Texas at Austin. Bard developed innovati ...

*2014 –

Claudio Pellegrini Claudio Pellegrini (born May 9, 1935) is an Italian/American physics and emeritus professor at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), known for his pioneering work on X-ray free electron lasers and collective effects in relativistic particl ...

;

Charles V. Shank Charles Vernon (Chuck) Shank (born July 12, 1943) is an American physicist, best known as the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory from 1989 to 2004. Early life and education Charles Vernon (Chuck) Shank was born in Mount Holly, ...

*2023 – Darleane C. Hoffman; Gabor A. Somorjai *2024 –

Héctor D. Abruña Héctor Daniel Abruña (born 1953) is a Puerto Rican physical chemist whose work focuses on electrochemistry, molecular electronics, fuel cells, batteries, and electrocatalysis. Abruña is director of the ''Energy Materials Center'' and Emile M. ...

;

Paul Alivisatos Armand Paul Alivisatos (born November 12, 1959) is a Greek and American chemist and academic administrator who is the President of the University of Chicago, 14th president of the University of Chicago since September 2021. He is a pioneer in nan ...

; John H. Nuckolls

References

External links

* * Physics awards Engineering awards Awards established in 1956 Lifetime achievement awards 1956 establishments in the United States American science and technology awards

Award An award, sometimes called a distinction, is given to a recipient as a token of recognition of excellence in a certain field. When the token is a medal, ribbon or other item designed for wearing, it is known as a decoration. An award may be d ...

{{sci-award-stub

Winners

See also

References

External links