Emilio Segré was born in Tivoli, Italy, in 1905. He received his doctorate in physics in 1928 under Enrico Fermi.

In 1934 he begun work in nuclear physics by collaborating with Professor Fermi on researching the neutron.He participated in the discovery of slow neutrons. 

In 1936, he was appointed Director of the Physics Laboratory at the University of Palermo.  After emigrating to America in 1938, he moved to Berkeley, California. There he was a research associate in