Enrico Fermi was an Italian-American physicist, renowned for being the creator of the world's first artificial nuclear reactor, Chicago Pile-1, and a member of the Manhattan Project.
Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Dated facts from Wikidata; ages marked “about” come from year-only dates.
Every fact on this page traces to one of these.
Also born on September 29
Actor
1942 · United Kingdom
Ian David McShane is an English actor. His television performances include the title role in the BBC series Lovejoy, Al Swearengen in Deadwood (2004–2006) and its 2019 film continuation, and Mr. Wednesday in American Gods (2017–2021).
Raph_PH, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Politician
1943 · Poland
Lech Wałęsa is a Polish statesman, dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who served as the president of Poland between 1990 and 1995.
MEDEF, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Author
1959 · Norway
Jon Olav Fosse is a Norwegian author, translator, and playwright. He was awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable."
Tom A. Kolstad/Det norske samlaget., CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Scientist
1932–2025 · United States
Rainer Weiss was a German-American physicist, known for his contributions in gravitational physics and astrophysics. He was a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an adjunct professor at Louisiana State University.
Bengt Nyman from Vaxholm, Sweden, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Scientist
1920–1992 · United Kingdom
Peter Dennis Mitchell FRS was a British biochemist who was awarded the 1978 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his theory of the chemiosmotic mechanism of ATP synthesis.
Scientist
1931–2016 · United States
James Watson Cronin was an American particle physicist.
Markus Pössel (Mapos), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons