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. In 1934 they made the famous discovery of slow neutrons, which later made possible the nuclear reactor and then the construction of the first atomic bomb. The nickname of the group comes from the address of the Institute, located in a street of Rione Monti in the city centre, which got its name from a nearby monastery, San Lorenzo in Panisperna. The other members of the group were 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. The growth of the group The group grew under the supervision of the physicist, minister, senator and director of the Institute of Physics Orso Mario Corbino. Corbino recognized the qualities of Enrico Fermi and led the commission which appointed him in 1926 to one of the first three professorships in Theoretical Physics in Italy. From 1929, Fermi and Corbino dedicated themselves to the transformation of the institute into a modern research centre. Rasetti and Fermi were contemporaries, who had met as undergraduates at Pisa, and worked together in Florence. The first of the Boys to join them was Segrè, who had been studying engineering. Segrè had got to know Rasetti though mountaineering and then been drawn into physics by their gatecrashing the first Volta Conference on Lake Como together. Amaldi as a schoolboy already knew Fermi through his father, a mathematician; the families had hiked together in the Dolomites. Later Corbino encouraged Amaldi as a young engineering student to switch to physics. Majorana had also been an engineering student; he switched to physics after his mathematical ability was recognised by Segrè, leading to an interview with Fermi. D'Agostino became involved because he was a chemist; he had been the assistant to Giulio Trabacchi, with whom the group collaborated because he had a supply of radium Pontecorvo joined the group later (1934); he came to Rome as a postgraduate to work with Rasetti, a family friend.. Research The first version of their research laboratory was mainly dedicated to atomic and molecular spectroscopy; afterwards, they moved towards experimental studies of the atomic nucleus. Research included the bombarding of various elements with neutrons, generated