Each year an award is given for exceptional and outstanding achievement in the field of atomic energy. This award is named after the person who produced the first controlled nuclear chain reaction, in 1942. After whom is this award named?

On December 2, 1942, underneath the bleachers of a squash court at the University of Chicago, a team of scientists achieved the impossible. They initiated the first man-made, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. This experiment, known as Chicago Pile-1, was a pivotal moment in the Manhattan Project and proved that the immense energy within the atom could be controlled and harnessed, effectively ushering in the Atomic Age.

The leader of this groundbreaking team was Enrico Fermi, an Italian-American physicist often called the "architect of the Nuclear Age." A brilliant and versatile scientist, Fermi had already been awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on induced radioactivity. He and his family used the trip to Stockholm for the Nobel ceremony to flee fascist Italy and emigrate to the United States, where his expertise became indispensable to the Allied war effort.

In 1956, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission established a presidential award to honor scientists for exceptional lifetime achievement in the development, use, or production of energy. As a tribute to the man whose scientific leadership fundamentally changed the world, the award was named in his honor. The Enrico Fermi Award remains one of the oldest and most prestigious science and technology honors given by the U.S. government.