Oscar D'Agostino (29 August 1901 – 16 March 1975) was an Italian chemist and one of the so-called Via Panisperna boys, the group of young scientists led by Enrico Fermi: all of them were physicists, except for D'Agostino, who was a chemist.

In 1934 he contributed to Fermi's experiment (that gave Fermi the possibility to win the Nobel Prize in 1938) to showing the properties of slow neutrons. That led the way to the discovery of nuclear fission, and later on to the construction of the first atomic bomb.

Oscar D'Agostino

Bibliography

O. D'Agostino: Il chimico dei fantasmi. Mephite, 2002

See also

Radioactive decay

Nuclear chain reaction

Slow neutron

Via Panisperna boys

Enrico Fermi

External links

Enrico Fermi and the Via Panisperna Boys from the Museum of Physics of "La Sapienza" University in Rome Il chimico dei fantasmi

Oscar D'Agostino

1901 births

1975 deaths

People from the Province of Avellino

Italian chemists

National Research Council (Italy) people

Oscar D'Agostino