A time capsule placed in a University of Chicago science building by one of the fathers of the atomic bomb more than 60 years ago was set to be opened today.
Enrico Fermi, who led the research team that built what was known as “Chicago Pile-1,” the first nuclear reactor, beneath the former Stagg Field, and then-U. of C. President Robert Maynard Hutchins, put the time capsule in the cornerstone of the Research Institute Building in 1950, according to a release from the university.
The opening of the time capsule will be live-streamed on the Web starting at 4 p.m. Speakers will include the dean of Physical Sciences at the U. of C., Robert Fefferman, as well as physics Professor Roger Hildebrand and chemistry Professor Stephen Berry.
Fefferman studies and maps interstellar dust clouds and Berry studies subatomic structures, according to the U. of C.
The building, 5640 S. Ellis Ave., is scheduled to be demolished in August, to make way for the new Eckhardt Research Center.
“The Eckhardt Center will host a broad spectrum of 21st-century science, from investigation of the deepest cosmic mysteries to manipulating matter on the scale of atoms and molecules,” according to the release.
The Research Institute Building once housed the Enrico Fermi Institute, which focuses on nuclear studies, and the James Franck Institute, which focuses on the study of metals. Part of the Fermi Institute will be housed at the new building, while the Franck Institute is housed at another building.
Both institutes were founded in 1945, three years after Fermi led the team that created the first artificial nuclear chain-reaction, in converted squash courts under Stagg Field, the university’s football stadium.
The Fermi and Franck institutes “continued the dialogue between pure science and technology that the Manhattan Project had initiated, and helped ease the barriers between traditional scientific disciplines,” according to the release. A score of Nobel laureates--including Fermi himself, who won a Nobel prize for his nuclear research in 1938, at age 37--worked in the building over the years.
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