Ricerc@Sapienza

The first Italian researcher to mention the possibility of producing energy by breaking atomic nuclei was Enrico Fermi. Fermi was appointed as professor of theoretical physics at the University of Rome in 1926. Backed by Orso Mario Corbino, who was at that time Director of the University’s Physics Institute, in 1927 and 1928 he assembled a group of young and brilliant researchers. During his term as Minister for the Economy, Corbino established a special office for the supply of radioactive substances.

In an essay published on the 11th of August 1967, the well-known writer Yukio Mishima 三島由紀夫 surprisingly yielded a confession about why he had never mentioned the trauma that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had exerted on his psyche – and if we are to take his statement literally, his literature as well. The essay is titled “Hiroshima inside me” (Watashi no naka no hiroshima. In it, Mishima describes the extent of the moral and psychic trauma that this event extolled on him as a youngster.