Enrico Fermi, a Nobel Prizewinner, is one of the principal founders of modern physics. On Dec. 2, 1942, he set in operation the first nuclear reactor, thus became the Prometheus of the Atomic Age. These distinctions should be enough, but this week Fermi could claim still another: his wife is one of the most engaging biographers who ever described the private life of a great scientist.
Laura Fermi's book. Atoms in the Family (University of Chicago Press; $4) starts with a hike outside Rome in 1924, when she met "a short-legged young man...
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