Hitler annexed Austria to Germany on March 15, 1938. Erwin Schrödinger, in Graz, soon regretted having applauded this and fled to Dublin. Stefan Meyer pre-emptively resigned his professorship in Vienna. Marietta Blau, discoverer of cosmic-ray disintegration “stars,” immigrated to Mexico. Polonium expert Elizabeth Rona immigrated to America. Renowned Lise Meitner escaped to Stockholm, where she received little scientific or personal support. Mussolini’s Fascist Italy adopted Nazi racial policies and enacted anti-Semitic laws in the fall of 1938. Bruno Rossi, dismissed from his professorship in Padua, immigrated with his wife to England and then to America. Emilio Segrè relinquished his professorship in Palermo and immigrated with his wife and young son to America. Enrico Fermi, his Jewish wife Laura, and their two children, went to Stockholm where he received the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics and then immigrated to America to begin what Laura Fermi called the process of Americanization.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day: How science earned Enrico Fermi a Nobel Prize – and saved his Jewish wife and children
