Emilio Segrè was born in Tivoli, Italy, in 1905 into a well‑to‑do Jewish family. He initially studied engineering at the University of Rome but soon shifted to physics, completing his doctorate in 1928 under Enrico Fermi, becoming Fermi’s first doctoral student. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, he worked closely with Fermi and the group of young physicists known as the Via Panisperna boys, contributing to the rapid development of Italian nuclear physics.

In the early 1930s, Segrè held research fellowships in Hamburg and Amsterdam, working with Otto Stern and Pieter Zeeman, both leading figures in experimental physics. He returned to Rome as an assistant professor, but the rise of fascism and antisemitic laws in Italy forced him to leave the country in 1938. He moved to the United States, joining the University of California, Berkeley, where he helped discover the elements technetium (1937) and astatine (1940).

During World War II, Segrè worked at Los Alamos as part of the Manhattan Project, contributing to the development of the first nuclear weapons. After the war, he returned to Berkeley, where he continued his research and teaching. In 1955, working with Owen Chamberlain, he co‑discovered the antiproton, a fundamental antiparticle with the same mass as the proton but opposite charge. This achievement earned them the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1959.

Segrè remained an influential figure in physics throughout his career, publishing scientific papers, historical works, and memoirs. He held academic positions in both the United States and Italy, including a return to the University of Rome in the 1970s. He died in Lafayette, California, in 1989 at the age of 84.