Ettore Majorana

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Ettore Majorana (Catania, Sicily, 1906 – Tyrrhenian Sea, 27 March 1938 (presumed)) was an Italian physicist who began promising work on neutrino masses. He abruptly disappeared at the age of 32.

1 Life and Work
2 Disappearance
3 Quotes
4 See also
5 External links:

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Life and Work

Majorana was mathematically extremely gifted, and was very young when he joined Enrico Fermi's team in Rome as one of the "Via Panisperna boys", who took their name from the street address of their laboratory. He specialized in atomic spectroscopy, working on a theory about the energies that stablize the atom, which later would have been known as Heisenberg's theory.

Majorana did prescient theoretical work on neutrino masses, a currently active subject of research. He also worked on an idea that mass may exert a small shielding effect on gravitational waves, which did not gain much traction.

His uncle Quirino Majorana was also a physicist.

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Disappearance

Majorana disappeared in unknown circumstances during a boat trip from Palermo to Naples. Despite several investigations, the truth about his fate is still uncertain. His body has not been found.

Hypotheses include that

He could have committed suicide. (He left two letters which contained a sort of farewell.)
He could have been kidnapped by foreign powers.
He could have voluntarily disappeared, changed his identity and possibly left Italy.

Some argue for this latter hypothesis, conjecturing that after having envisioned the destructive power of atomic energy, Majorana did not want to contribute to its deployment in a fascist state. There have been sporadic rumors that he would have been sighted in South America in the 1950's. Also in Italy a story appeared in the news when a man living on the street claimed that he once was a famous physicist.

The Italian writer Leonardo Sciascia has summarized some of the results of these investigations and these hypotheses in his passionate book "Il caso Majorana (1972)" (English translation: "The Moro Affair and The Mystery of Majorana," Carcanet (1987), ISBN 0-85635-700-6).

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Quotes

There are many categories of scientists, people of second and third rank, who do their best, but do not go very far. There are also people of first class, who make great discoveries, fundamental for the development of science. But then there are the geniuses, like Galilei and Newton. Well, Ettore Majorana was one of them ... — Enrico Fermi

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