核能之父恩里科·费米 | 经济学人文化

02 第十四期翻译打卡营 

History of physics

物理学的演变

Enrico Fermi, father of thenuclear age

恩里科·费米，核能之父

A new biography of the Italian physicistconsidered the last man to know everything

费米新传记——这位意大利物理学家被认为是最后一个无所不知的人

JUST before daybreak on July 16th 1945 Enrico Fermi lay down in the open desert of New Mexico. At 05:30, the world’s first nuclear explosion took place ten miles (16km) away. He counted off the seconds after the flash, anticipating the arrival of the blast-wave. With preternatural calm, Fermi stood up and let some strips of paper flutter away as the wave passed. They flew about eight feet. The Trinity nuclear test, he pronounced after making some quick calculations, had released the equivalent of about 10 kilotonnes of TNT.

1945年7月16日破晓前，恩里科·费米躺在新墨西哥州的沙漠开阔地带。凌晨5点30分，在他十英里（16公里）开外，世界上首颗原子弹成功引爆。看见爆炸的闪光后，费米开始数秒，预测冲击波到达的时间。他从容自若地起身，在冲击波涌来时撒下一堆纸片，让其散落在空中。纸片落在了近八英尺远的地方。然后费米迅速演算并宣布，这场三位一体核试验释放的能量相当于一万吨TNT烈性炸药。

Fermi was, by that stage, already a celebrity among physicists. An obvious mathematics prodigy as a child in Italy, he had devoured texts written for adults. Throughout his life he kept few books, preferring to derive conclusions from first principles whenever he felt the need.

当时，费米已经是一位颇有名气的物理学家了。他儿时就是意大利的数学奇才，成年人才能看懂的读物他也看得如饥似渴，津津有味。但是他一生藏书寥寥无几，宁可在觉得必要时依据第一性原理来推断出结论。

注：

第一性原理（First principles）：物理学概念，最早由亚里士多德提出，是指每个系统当中无法违背或剔除的、最为基本的命题。

As he took up different posts in academic research in Italy and abroad, Fermi showed himself to be not only a theorist with unparalleled insight but also adept as an experimentalist (a rare combination) across every kind of physics. He had an uncanny knack for rough-and-ready calculations to obtain approximate answers for damnably difficult questions (the Trinity bomb, later analysis revealed, released 18 kilotonnes of TNT, which was surprisingly close to Fermi’s desert estimation).

费米在意大利国内外学界担任各项职位之时，在所有物理学分支都同时展现出了理论家的超群见解和实验家的材优干济（这样的人非常罕见）。他有种神奇的本领，只需通过粗略演算，便能得出极难问题的大致答案（后经分析表明，三位一体核试验释放的能量相当于1万8千吨TNT炸药，与费米在沙漠中估算出的数值惊人地相似）。

He eschewed complexity, preferring to tackle only a problem’s essentials, discard any distracting elements and ruthlessly squeeze what remained. Such back-of-the-envelope calculations, which became known as “Fermi problems”, were such good examples of critical thinking that recruiters nowadays test applicants’ mettle by setting them as interview questions. Fermi’s solutions were so often right that his colleagues in Rome called him “the pope”. His boss recognised that he could help raise the reputation of Italian science.

他避开复杂的问题，更热衷于只看问题的本质；他毫不理会任何干扰因素，只会心无旁骛地探索问题本身。这类粗略的算术后来被称为“费米问题”，是批判性思维的绝佳范例；如今，招聘方还会将其作为面试问题，测试应聘者的胆量。费米的算法往往不出差错，他在罗马的同事甚至称他为“教皇”，老板也认为他能提高意大利科学界的声誉。

Fermi’s discovery of how slow-moving neutrons helped to make some atoms radioactive won him the Nobel prize in 1938. He used the trip to Stockholm to abscond with his family from his increasingly fascist homeland. Once in America he became involved in the Manhattan Project, which led to the first nuclear bomb, bringing him renown well beyond the physics community.

1938年，凭借慢中子有助于诱发部分原子出现放射性这一发现，费米荣获诺贝尔物理学奖。当时，意大利国内的法西斯势力日益猖獗，费米便利用赴斯德哥尔摩领奖的机会，携家眷远走他乡。踏足美国后不久，费米便加入了曼哈顿计划，由此诞生的世界上首枚原子弹令他声名远播，享誉物理学界内外。

Fermi was an inveterate showman. In Chicago, on the day he demonstrated the world’s first controlled nuclear chain reaction—a prerequisite for the uncontrolled kind in a nuclear weapon—he ran the show like a circus ringmaster, ramping up the tension by calling for lunch just as things literally heated up.

费米是个彻头彻尾的表演大咖。一天，他在芝加哥演示全球首个可控的链式核反应，该反应为核武器中的不可控链式反应奠定了前提和基础。虽兹事体大，他却仿佛在指挥一场马戏表演，为了使现场气氛高涨，故意在众人翘首以盼、反应堆温度越来越高的时候喊大家去吃午饭。

David Schwartz(大卫·施瓦茨), the author of “The Last Man Who Knew Everything”, is the son of another Nobel-winning physicist. His father left some intriguing correspondence on Fermi, which inspired Mr Schwartz to learn more. He interviewed many of Fermi’s students and colleagues, shedding light also on Fermi the educator (his lectures were so renowned that even notes taken by his assistants were a bestseller).

大卫·施瓦茨（David Schwartz）撰写了这本费米传记——《最后一个无所不知的人》。施瓦茨的父亲也曾获诺贝尔物理学奖，还与费米有书信往来，两人遗留下来的信件内容十分有趣，激发了施瓦茨对费米本人的“求知欲”。他为此采访了多位费米的学生和同事，书里也提到了费米的执教生涯（费米的讲座一度广受好评，人们甚至争相购买其助手摘录的课堂笔记）。

Mr Schwartz deftly conveys the aesthetic beauty of Fermi’s insights without getting mired in their minutiae. His book includes only enough scientific detail to explain each discovery as it happened. Fermi is depicted as a natural leader—in the laboratory, on hiking trails near his workplaces in Rome and New Mexico, and in the square-dances he came to love in America. Yet for all his gregariousness Fermi tended to reveal little of his emotions in conversations or correspondence, even as he worked on the team to develop humanity’s most terrible weapons. Laura, his wife, did not know until after the bombs fell just what her husband had really been up to in his laboratory.

施瓦茨的写作技巧娴熟，既展现了费米思想的深度和美，又不会显得琐碎庞杂。对于每项科学发现背后的诸多细节，他都点到即止。在他笔下，费米天生具有领导才能，在实验室里工作时如此，在工作场所（罗马或新墨西哥）附近的山道上徒步时亦如此。甚至，连跳四方舞时也如此，而这还是他抵美后才培养的爱好。不过，费米虽然善于交际，却极少在对话和书信中表露个人情感，甚至连参与研制人类史上最骇人听闻的武器期间也是如此。直到原子弹爆炸成功，他的妻子萝拉才终于弄清楚他在实验室里到底在搞什么。

As a result, Mr Schwartz tussles with many of the same questions that have dogged previous Fermi biographers. Did he stay so long in Italy, joining Benito Mussolini’s vaunted Accademia d’Italia, just for the funds and freedom to pursue his precious research? Did he participate in the Manhattan Project out of patriotism for his adopted country, or was he dragged along because of his expertise in nuclear physics? Or was he just insatiably curious about whether the bomb could indeed be made?

因此，很多问题困扰着之前撰写费米传记的作者，同样的问题也困扰着施瓦茨。费米在意大利呆了那么久，加入了贝尼托·墨索里尼（BenitoMussolini）引以为傲的意大利科学院（Accademia d’italia），仅仅是为了获得从事宝贵的研究所需的资金和自由吗？他参与曼哈顿计划是对第二故乡爱国情怀的体现，还是因为他是核物理方面的专家，所以被硬拉去了？或者他只是好奇是不是真的能造出原子弹？

It would be easy to depict Fermi as a standard reticent genius who solved every problem as if he had, as one student put it, “an inside track to God”. But Mr Schwartz’s sleuthing also reveals how science works in its proper context: how each finding builds on the last; how identical ideas can occur to more than one person when the intellectual conditions are right; how an insight into nature arises not from a vacuum but from hard-won experience and, usually, some clever calculating.

把费米刻画成一个典型的寡言天才并不难，就像一个学生说的那样，他好像有“通往上帝的捷径”，因为他能解决所有问题。但施瓦茨的研究也揭示了科学是如何在正常条件下运作的：每个新发现是如何基于上一个发现得出的；在智力正常的情况下，为什么不同的人会有完全相同的看法；对自然的洞察不是凭空产生的，而是得益于来之不易的经验，通常还需要一些巧妙的计算。

Fermi was once described by a student as the last man who knew everything. He went on to make important discoveries in particle physics, geophysics and even the science of the stars. And he never stopped calculating. Even on his deathbed, he used a stopwatch to determine exactly how much fluid he was receiving from his intravenous drip. It was a simple problem, really, if you focused on the essentials.

曾经有学生说费米是最后一个无所不知的人。后来，他在粒子物理学、地球物理学甚至天文学方面都有重要发现。而且他从未停止过计算，甚至在他弥留之际，他还用秒表准确测定了接受静脉滴注的液体量。真的，如果你专注于本质的话，这个问题并不难。

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