Editing Emilio Segrè (section)

==Physics professor==
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]].<ref name="Nobel">{{cite web |url=https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1959/segre-bio.html |title=Emilio Segrè – Biography |access-date=22 May 2013 |publisher= The Nobel Foundation }}</ref> In 1934, he met Elfriede Spiro, a Jewish woman whose family had come from Ostrowo in [[West Prussia]], but had fled to [[Breslau]] when that part of Prussia became part of Poland after World War I. After the [[Nazi Party]] came to power in Germany in 1933, she had emigrated to Italy, where she worked as a secretary and an interpreter. At first she did not speak Italian well, and Segrè and Spiro conversed in German, in which he was fluent.{{sfn|Segrè|1993|pp=96–97}} The two were married at the [[Great Synagogue of Rome]] on 2 February 1936. He agreed with the rabbi to spend the minimal amount on the wedding, giving the balance of what would be spent on a luxury wedding to Jewish refugees from Germany. The rabbi managed to give them many of the trappings of a luxury wedding anyway.{{sfn|Segrè|1993|p=107}} The couple had three children: Claudio, born in 1937, Amelia Gertrude Allegra, born in 1937, and Fausta Irene, born in 1945.{{sfn|Jackson|2002|p=7}}

[[File:Ragazzi di via Panisperna.jpg|thumb|right|The ''Via Panisperna boys'' in the courtyard of Rome University's Physics Institute in Via Panisperna. Left to right: [[Oscar D'Agostino]], Segrè, [[Edoardo Amaldi]], [[Franco Rasetti]] and [[Enrico Fermi]].]]
After marrying, Segrè sought a stable job and became professor of physics and director of the Physics Institute at the [[University of Palermo]]. He found the equipment there primitive and the library bereft of modern physics literature, but his colleagues at Palermo included the mathematicians [[Michele Cipolla]] and [[Michele De Franchis]], the mineralogist [[Carlo Perrier]] and the botanist {{ill|Luigi Montemartini|it}}.{{sfn|Segrè|1993|pp=104–106}} In 1936 he paid a visit to [[Ernest O. Lawrence]]'s [[Berkeley Radiation Laboratory]], where he met [[Edwin McMillan]], [[Donald Cooksey]], [[Franz Kurie]], [[Philip Abelson]] and [[Robert Oppenheimer]]. Segrè was intrigued by the radioactive scrap metal that had once been part of the laboratory's [[cyclotron]]. In Palermo, this was found to contain a number of radioactive [[isotope]]s. In February 1937, Lawrence sent him a [[molybdenum]] strip that was emitting anomalous forms of [[radioactivity]]. Segrè enlisted Perrier's help to subject the strip to careful chemical and theoretical analysis, and they were able to prove that some of the radiation was being produced by a previously unknown element.{{sfn|Jackson|2002|pp=9–10}} In 1947 they named it [[technetium]], as it was the first artificially synthesized [[chemical element]].{{sfn|Segrè|1993|pp=115–118}}<ref name=segre>{{cite journal|doi = 10.1038/159024a0|pmid = 20279068|title = Technetium: The Element of Atomic Number 43|year = 1947|last1 = Perrier|first1 = C.|last2 = Segrè|first2 = E.|journal = Nature|volume = 159|issue = 4027|pages = 24|bibcode = 1947Natur.159...24P |s2cid = 4136886}}</ref>