Emilio G. Segrè

Emilio Gino Segrè (/səˈɡreɪ/ sə-GRAY; Italian: [eˈmiːljo ˈdʒiːno seˈgrɛ]; 1 February 1905 – 22 April 1989) was an Italian-American nuclear physicist and radiochemist who discovered the elements technetium and astatine, and the antiproton, a subatomic antiparticle, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1959, along with Owen Chamberlain.

Born in Tivoli, near Rome, Segrè studied engineering at the University of Rome La Sapienza before taking up physics in 1927. Segrè was appointed assistant professor of physics at the University of Rome in 1932 and worked there until 1936, becoming one of the Via Panisperna boys. From 1936 to 1938 he was director of the Physics Laboratory at the University of Palermo. After a visit to Ernest O. Lawrence's Berkeley Radiation Laboratory, he was sent a molybdenum strip from the laboratory's cyclotron accelerator in 1937, which was emitting anomalous forms of radioactivity. Using careful chemical and theoretical analysis, Segrè was able to prove that some of the radiation was being produced by a previously unknown element, named technetium, the first artificially synthesized chemical element that does not occur in nature.