Bidspirit auction | [VARIOUS AUTOGRAPHS, LETTERS, & DOCUMENTS]

[VARIOUS AUTOGRAPHS, LETTERS, & DOCUMENTS] - ENRICO FERMI (1901–1954) - Important Autograph Postcard Signed from Göttingen - ENRICO FERMI (1901–1954) “LA VITA CHE FACCIO QUI PRESENTA MOLTA ANALOGIA CON QUELLA CHE FACEVO L’ANNO SCORSO A PISA” Important Autograph Postcard Signed from Göttingen, written at the outset of Fermi’s scientific career, 7 June 1923 Autograph postcard signed “Enrico Fermi”, in Italian, Göttingen, 7 June 1923, to the mathematician Luigi Fantappiè (1901–1956), Via Mazzini 4, Viterbo, Italy. Densely written in Fermi’s hand on both sides, addressed and signed by him, with multiple German postage stamps and Göttingen postal cancellations. An evocative early letter by the twenty-one-year-old Fermi, written from Göttingen during one of the formative periods of his scientific career to his friend and fellow student Luigi Fantappiè. Fermi writes that he has been waiting for some time for news from Fantappiè and reports news received from home, mentioning a friend who had been seriously ill but was now convalescing. He then gives an engaging account of his own life in Germany, remarking on its similarity to his student days in Pisa: “La vita che faccio qui presenta molta analogia con quella che facevo l’anno scorso a Pisa” (“The life I lead here bears a strong resemblance to the one I led last year in Pisa.”) In a charming glimpse of the young physicist’s everyday life, Fermi mentions that he has bought a new bicycle, which will probably keep him busy during the two months remaining before his return to Italy. He describes Göttingen as still rather cold, with rain almost every day, although the weather does not prevent him from going out. He closes by saying that he hopes to receive news soon and sends affectionate greetings to Fantappiè and his family. The place and date give the postcard particular biographical significance. Fermi was in Göttingen in 1923 at a crucial stage in his intellectual development, having graduated from the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa the previous year. Göttingen was then one of the foremost centres of theoretical physics and mathematics in Europe, and Fermi had travelled there to study in the circle of Max Born. Although his stay in Germany would prove less decisive for his scientific development than his subsequent encounter with Paul Ehrenfest in Leiden, it nevertheless marked an important stage in the extraordinarily rapid emergence of the young physicist who, within only a few years, would become one of the leading figures of modern theoretical physics. The recipient, Luigi Fantappiè, almost exactly Fermi’s contemporary, was himself at the beginning of a distinguished mathematical career. A pupil of Vito Volterra, he would become particularly known for his theory of analytic functionals. The postcard thus also documents the friendship and intellectual network surrounding a remarkable generation of young Italian scientists. Particularly attractive for its combination of scientific association and biographical detail, the postcard captures Fermi not as the later Nobel laureate and architect of the nuclear age, but as a twenty-one-year-old scholar abroad, writing to a friend about news from home, the rain, his new bicycle and the familiar rhythms of scholarly life he remembered from Pisa. One item: autograph postcard signed, Göttingen, 7 June 1923.