Ugo Fano was born in Torino, Italy in 1912. He received his doctorate from the University of Torino in 1934. He then joined Enrico Fermi’s group in Rome, becoming a lecturer at the University of Rome. In 1935, Ugo left Italy, where the ethnic laws had made it impossible for him to work. First he went to Paris, where he collaborated with Pierre Joliot. In 1939, he came to the United States and became a guest researcher at the Carnegie Institution of Washington (CIW). He received his first research position at CIW at Cold Spring Harbor in New York, but, due to World War II, began work on ballistics at the US Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground in Aberdeen, Maryland.

After the war, he returned to CIW at Cold Spring Harbor, but spent most of his time at the physics department of Columbia University. In 1946, Fano joined the National Bureau of standards, until 1966 when the Bureau was moved to Maryland. At that time, he was offered a position at the University of Chicago, where he would serve as chair and perform research into the 1990s.

Ugo received the Enrico Fermi Award from the US Department of Energy in 1995 and the William F. Meggers Award from The Optical Society in 1989.

Fano passed away in 1999.