Named in memory of the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi (1901–1954), winner of the 1938 Nobel Prize in physics for his demonstration of the existence of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation and for the related discovery of nuclear reactions primed by slow neutrons. A many-sided personality, Fermi has been a star in the heavens of this century’s physics, as shown in his studies of nuclear and particle physics. He is the second Italian Nobel laureate in physics, joining Guglielmo Marconi {see planet  (1332)} (1909). (M 33790) _ _.