HISTORY OF PHYSICS

The outstanding Italian physicist Daniele Amati, who passed away recently (RIP), studied in Argentina.

In 1952, together with his classmate Alberto Sirlin, he stayed at CBPq (Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Fisicas / Brasilian Center of Physical Research) in Rio de Janeiro.

At that time, Feynman arrived and they took part of his lectures.

in 1954, Amati returned to Italy and in the summer he attended a one-month course given by Fermi.

He compared Fermi and Feynman this roughly as follows: you ask a question to Feynman and, in many cases, he invents on the spot a clever and very original argument to answer the question; you understand the argument but at the same time you have the strong feeling that in no way you would have thought of it. You ask a question to Fermi and his answer is so simple that you have the strong feeling that you should have thought of it yourself!

There is a biography of Feynman, “To the Beat of a Different Drum”, by the historian J. Mehra, where he is asked about his graduate students. He replied that there were three students on whom he felt he had a very positive influence: Daniele Amati and Alberto Sirlin in Brasil, and Sam Berman, one of his students in Caltech. "I always say that those two (referring to Amati & Sirlin) were the students that really learned from me”.

--end