Ugo Fano; Nuclear Physicist Noted for Work on Subatomic Particles

Ugo Fano, a groundbreaking nuclear physicist who uncovered improbable realities of how light and matter interact at the subatomic level, has died.

Fano died of complications related to Alzheimer’s disease on Tuesday in a retirement home in Chicago’s Hyde Park. He was 88.

A student in the 1930s of Enrico Fermi and Werner Heisenberg, Fano provided one of the few direct links between modern researchers and what has been termed physics’ golden age at the beginning of the 20th century.

In a storied career, Fano predicted a startling world of spinning electrons, explained the reason behind asymmetrical spectral shapes emitted by excited atoms, and identified the hazards of radioactivity for human genes.

“He could point out important things right away,” said Mitio Inokuti, a senior physicist emeritus at Argonne National Laboratory.

Fano earned a reputation for boiling down apparently diverse and complex phenomena, and his theoretical work led to a range of practical applications in fields from nuclear medicine to laser research.

While working as a researcher for Fermi, he was able to show that atoms, given a choice of two reactions when bombarded by energy, chose both.

“He gave such clean theoretical analyses that people found them useful,” said Anthony Starace, associate dean for science research at the University of Nebraska. “He always insisted on great generality because he knew that would be more powerful.”

Fano was born in Torino, Italy. His father, Gino, was a noted mathematician, but the son gravitated to atomic physics.

He received his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Torino in 1934 and did postdoctoral work with Fermi at the University of Rome until 1936.

After doing research under Heisenberg at the University of Leipzig, he returned briefly to Rome and married the former Camilla Lattes before they fled to the United States in 1939 to escape fascism.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Fano led U.S. research into the effects of radiation on biological systems, which entailed blasting fruit fly genes with radioactivity and studying subsequent generations.

Fano joined the University of Chicago in 1966. He was a former chairman of the physics department and a professor emeritus there since 1982.

In 1968, he wrote an article that set an agenda for particle accelerator research that would be followed for decades.

During the late 1960s he made one of his pioneering theoretical forecasts: that shooting beams of light of certain known energies at atoms could kick off electrons that spun in predictable directions.

“It was a little hard to believe. It sounds like magic, you see?” said Inokuti. “ It sounds as if you produce something out of nothing.”

Survivors include his wife; two daughters, Mary Giacomoni and Virginia Ghattas; a brother, Robert; and four grandchildren.