Enrico Fermi in Florence [Historical corner]

In this issue, we host - for the second time - a paper on the Italian-American physicist, Enrico Fermi. The f rst paper (IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, 53, 3, June 2011, pp. 226-230) was focused on a commemoration of Guglielmo Marconi by Enrico Fermi. The present paper spans a period of the life of Fermi that is not so well known, which he spent at the University of Florence as an Assistant Professor. He also taught at the School of Engineering, to which the three authors of this paper belong. This period is relevant for electronic engineers. In those Florentine years, Enrico Fermi developed and published the Fermi-Dirac statistics. These are funda mental in semiconductor physics, and therefore in modern electronics.