An Historical Anecdote

Serendipity Ushers in the Atomic Age...

Sixty-seven years ago, Cesarina Marani, the cleaning woman of Rome's legendary physics institute, left her mop buckets under a desk, and forever changed nuclear energy research.

It seems the institute's scientists, including nuclear pioneer Enrico Fermi, could not find a way to stabilize the nuclear reactions they produced so that radiation levels could be predicted and the power harnessed. The missing ingredient turned out to be the water Ms. Marani had used to mop the tiles in the hallway.

Ms. Marani left three mop buckets under the desk of a researcher notorious for producing unexpected results. Two other researchers spotted the buckets of water and suggested to Fermi that they could be responsible for the unexpected experimental outcome. Sure enough, the water was the stabilizer the nuclear reactions needed; the water made the neutrons' impact more powerful and consistent. This discovery allowed Fermi to overcome an important hurdle to splitting the uranium atom, the first step in building an atomic bomb – a feat he accomplished a decade later in Los Alamos, New Mexico.