The beginnings: a school of modern physics

The Enrico Fermi Museum and Research Centre (CREF) is located in the building that previously housed the historic Royal Physical Institute on Via Panisperna in Rome.

The Institute was inaugurated in 1881 under the direction of Pietro Blaserna, a physicist from Gorizia, and became a veritable “creative environment”. This new approach to education transformed the relationship between students and the institution, allowing them to utilise the facilities to conduct independent and original research.

The concept, as articulated by his successor, Orso Mario Corbino, was to establish in Rome a contemporary and sophisticated institution dedicated to the advancement of physics, in alignment with the leading research centres of the era, including those in Cambridge, Göttingen, Copenhagen, Paris, Berlin, Leiden, and beyond.

The 1930s: the boys of Via Panisperna

In the 1930s, Enrico Fermi, who had been appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics in 1926, organised and prepared the conditions for the birth of a group of young scientists who became The group of young scientists, who became known as the “Boys of Via Panisperna” (Franco Rasetti, Emilio Segrè, Edoardo Amaldi, Bruno Pontecorvo, Oscar D’Agostino and Ettore Majorana) were renowned in the 1930s.

During an exceptional period for Italian science, the first experiments were conducted under his scientific leadership on the phenomenon of radioactivity induced by neutrons, which constituted fundamental research for the understanding of the structure of the atomic nucleus. The success of this research was crowned by the award of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1938.

Concurrently, the Institute was relocated to the recently established university town of “Sapienza,” and the building on Via Panisperna was repurposed. It was transformed from an international scientific centre to the archive of the State Police, which was subsequently incorporated into the Viminale area.

A committee for Panisperna

The Palazzina was able to resume its activities thanks to the efforts of a committee of interested parties.

As a consequence of this collective endeavour and the ardent enthusiasm that underpinned it, the Enrico Fermi Historical Museum of Physics and t Research Centre was established by Law No. 62 of 15 March 1999.

The process of transforming the institution into a scientific center was lengthy and complex, largely due to the distinctive location of the building within the Viminale  and the extensive renovation work that was required. The activities officially started in the new headquarters in Novembre 2019.