Emilio Segrè is credited as the co-discoverer of three chemical elements, technetium in 1937, astatine in 1940, and plutonium in 1941. In addition, he was codiscoverer, with his former student Owen Chamberlain, of the antiproton in 1955, an achievement for which he shared the 1959 Nobel Prize in physics. Segrè's early academic career is closely intertwined with that of nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi , under whom he received his doctorate at the University of Rome in 1928. Segrè then continued his affiliation with that university for most of the next eight years. In 1936, he was appointed professor of physics at the University of Palermo, but was discharged two years later by the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini. Already in the United States at the time of his dismissal, Segrè accepted an appointment at the University of California at Berkeley, where he remained until his retirement in 1972. He returned to the...