Pozzuolo Umbro, a village a kilometre from “Villa Cozzano”, where the physicist Franco Rasetti, scientist, right-hand man and friend of Enrico Fermi, was born and bred. Franco Rasetti was one of the “Via Panisperna Boys” ??, a group formed by Fermi, Maiorana, Pontecorvo, Amaldi and Segre, who carried out the first artificial fission of the atomic nucleus.
Rasetti is remembered chiefly as the scientist of the “great refusal”. Faced by the moral problem of atomic research applied to military purposes, he said “no” to the atomic bomb, deciding at a certain stage in his life to abandon physics. He famously declared that “Physics cannot sell its soul to the devil, not even in the name of a just cause”.
Franco Rasetti’s ashes were brought back to the little cemetery of his native Pozzuolo Umbro (PG).