Via Panisperna boys

Via Panisperna boys (Italian: i ragazzi di Via Panisperna) is the name given to a group of young Italian scientists led by Enrico Fermi, who worked at the Royal Physics Institute of the University of Rome La Sapienza and made the famous discovery of slow neutrons in 1934. This later enabled development of the nuclear reactor and construction of the first atomic bomb.

The members of the group were Enrico Fermi, Edoardo Amaldi, Oscar D'Agostino, Ettore Majorana, Bruno Pontecorvo, Franco Rasetti and Emilio Segrè. All were physicists, except for D'Agostino, who was a chemist. Their collective nickname comes from the address of the Royal Physics Institute, located in a street of Rione Monti in the city centre named in turn after a nearby monastery, San Lorenzo in Panisperna.