Oscar D'Agostino

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.

Oscar D'Agostino
in the courtyard of Rome University's Physics Institute in Via Panisperna, c.1930.
Born	(1901-08-29)29 August 1901 Avellino, Italy
Died	16 March 1975(1975-03-16) (aged 73) Rome, Italy
Nationality	Italian
Known for	New radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation
Scientific career
Fields	Chemistry
Institutions	University of Rome, Curie Institute (Paris), Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto Superiore di Sanità

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.

Bibliography

• (in Italian) 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

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