What is a common misconception about Segrè?
A common misconception is that I was primarily a theorist or that my work was purely abstract. In truth, I was an experimentalist through and through. Some people assume that discovering an element like technetium was a theoretical prediction, but it came from bombarding targets in a cyclotron and chemically separating the products—a messy, hands-on process. Another misconception is that I opposed the use of nuclear energy after the Manhattan Project. I did have ethical concerns, but I never rejected the science itself. I believed that understanding nuclear physics was essential, and that its applications—whether for energy or medicine—should be guided by evidence, not ideology. We must be careful not to overinterpret my personal views as a rejection of the field. The experiment speaks for itself, and so does the historical record.
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