History of Initial Rejection and Later Publication
Fermi first submitted his "tentative" theory of beta decay to the famous science journal Nature, which rejected it for being "too speculative." Nature later admitted the rejection to be one of the great editorial blunders in its history. Fermi then submitted the paper to Italian and German publications, which accepted and published it in 1933 in those languages, but it did not appear at the time in a primary publication in English (Nature finally belatedly republished Fermi's report on beta decay in English on January 16, 1939).
Fermi found the initial rejection of the paper so troubling that he decided to take some time off from theoretical physics, and do only experimental physics. This would lead shortly to his famous work with activation of nuclei with slow neutrons.
Read more about this topic: Fermi's Interaction
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