Enrico Fermi alone

    Caption: "Enrico Fermi (1901--1954), Italian-American physicist, received the 1938 Nobel Prize in physics for identifying new elements and discovering nuclear reactions by his method of nuclear irradiation and bombardment. He was born in Rome, Italy 1901 Sep29, and died in Chicago, Illinois, on 1954 Nov28."

    Among many other things, Fermi is famous for the Fermi question:

      "Don't you ever wonder where everybody is?"

      ---Enrico Fermi (1901--1954), at lunch, probably summer of 1950 at Los Alamos National Laboratory (Eric M. Jones 1985, Physics Today, 38, no. 8, 11). A photocopy of Eric M. Jones's (1944--) original article is https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/5746675 which includes the stimulating cartoon and letters recalling the origin of the Fermi question.

    There are several recollections of the Fermi question, and the one above is the longest one.

    Apocryphally, the Fermi question is often given as the more emphatic "Where are they!"---you should imagine hand gestures.

    The question has taken on a life of its own as the Fermi paradox: the apparent contradiction between huge estimated populations of extraterrestrial life (ETs) and our Easter-Island-like loneliness in the universe.

    Credit/Permission: United States Department of Energy, Office of Public Affairs, 1943--1949 / Public domain.
    Image link: Wikipedia: File:Enrico Fermi 1943-49.jpg.
    Local file: local link: enrico_fermi_question.html.
    File: Astronomer file: enrico_fermi_question.html.