Ettore Majorana

On the night of March 26, 1938, nuclear physicist Ettore Majorana boarded a ship, cash and passport in hand. He was never seen again. In A Brilliant Darkness, theoretical physicist Joao Magueijo tells the story of Majorana and his research group, "the Via Panisperna Boys," who discovered atomic fission in 1934. As Majorana, the most brilliant of the group, began to realize the implications of what they had found, he became increasingly unstable. Did he commit suicide that night in Palermo? Was he kidnapped? Did he stage his own death? A Brilliant Darkness chronicles Majorana's invaluable contributions to science -- including his major discovery, the Majorana neutrino -- while revealing the truth behind his fascinating and tragic life.

HISTORICAL PRELUDE Ettore Majorana's fame solidly rests on testimonies like the following, from the evocative pen of Giuseppe Cocconi. At the request of Edoardo Amaldi, he wrote from CERN (July 18, 1965): "In January 1938, after having just graduated, I was invited, essen tially by you, to come to the Institute of Physics at the University in Rome for six months as a teaching assistant, and once I was there I would have the good fortune of joining Fermi, Bernardini (who had been given a chair at Camerino a few months earlier) and Ageno (he, too, a new graduate), in the research of the products of disintegration of /-L "mesons" (at that time called mesotrons or yukons), which are produced by cosmic rays [ . . . ] "It was actually while I was staying with Fermi in the small laboratory on the second floor, absorbed in our work, with Fermi working with a piece of Wilson's chamber (which would help to reveal mesons at the end of their range) on a lathe and me constructing a jalopy for the illumination of the chamber, using the flash produced by the explosion of an aluminum ribbon short circuited on a battery, that Ettore Majorana came in search of Fermi. I was introduced to him and we exchanged few words. A dark face. And that was it.

This book presents in full the work of the Italian theoretical physicist Ettore Majorana and explains its impacts, which are still being felt. It opens with a contribution by A. Zichichi that considers in depth the scientific genius of Majorana. This introductory chapter is followed, in chronological order, by the eleven scientific papers by this great scientist, in most cases translated into English for the first time. Each paper is accompanied by a comment from an expert in the field in question. Although very few in number, Majorana's papers constitute a heritage of undeniable value and extraordinary scientific meaning, since they laid the foundations for research fields that remain topical today. With this in mind, two additional contributions on ongoing developments in these research fields are included: one on neutrino physics and the other on Majorana fermions in condensed matter. The volume closes with a note on Majorana's life until his ill-fated disappearance.

This biography sheds new light on the life and work of physicist Ettore Majorana (including unpublished contributions), as well as on his mysterious disappearance in March 1938. Majorana is held by many, including Nobel Laureate, Enrico Fermi, to have been a genius of the rank of Galilei and Newton. In this intriguing story, the author, himself a leading expert on the work of Majorana, supplements the existing literature with new insights, anecdotes and personal accounts of contemporaries of Majorana.

A unique volume exploring Majorana's work, for graduate students and researchers interested in the history of science.

This book presents in full the work of the Italian theoretical physicist Ettore Majorana and explains its impacts, which are still being felt. It opens with a contribution by A. Zichichi that considers in depth the scientific genius of Majorana. This introductory chapter is followed, in chronological order, by the eleven scientific papers by this great scientist, in most cases translated into English for the first time. Each paper is accompanied by a comment from an expert in the field in question. Although very few in number, Majorana's papers constitute a heritage of undeniable value and extraordinary scientific meaning, since they laid the foundations for research fields that remain topical today. With this in mind, two additional contributions on ongoing developments in these research fields are included: one on neutrino physics and the other on Majorana fermions in condensed matter. The volume closes with a note on Majorana's life until his ill-fated disappearance.

Without listing his works, all of which are highly notable both for the originality of the methods utilized as well as for the importance of the results achieved, we limit ourselves to the following: Inmodernnucleartheories, thecontributionmadebythisresearcher to the introduction of the forces called ‘Majorana forces’ is universally recognized as the one, among the most fundamental, that permits us to theoretically comprehend the reasons for nuclear stability. The work of Majorana today serves as a basis for the most important research in this ?eld. In atomic physics, the merit of having resolved some of the most - tricate questions on the structure of spectra through simple and elegant considerations of symmetry is due to Majorana. Lastly, he devised a brilliant method that permits us to treat the positive and negative electron in a symmetrical way, ?nally elimin- ing the necessity to rely on the extremely arti?cial and unsatisfactory hypothesis of an in?nitely large electrical charge di?used in space, a question that had been tackled in vain by many other scholars [4].

A century after his birth, Ettore Majorana is rightfully considered one of the greatest physicists of the first half of the last century. With this volume the Italian Physical Society presents a collection of Ettore Majorana's scientific papers in the original language and, for the first time -- with three exceptions -- translated into English. Each paper is then followed by a comment in English of an expert in the scientific field.