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Unveiled #Genius and Endless #Mysteries — Ettore #Majorana
The corner of the books by Gabriella Bernardi
“March 25 [1938] In the morning he [Ettore Majorana] goes to the Institute of Physics to give one of his students the folder with his lecture notes. After going back to the hotel, at about 5 o’ clock in the afternoon, he leaves it for an unknown destination. Here end the (confirmed) traces of Majorana’s ensuing fate.” These are the last words in the Timeline at the end of the book by Salvatore Esposito about Ettore Majorana, a young Italian physicist of the last century.
As remembered by his family, he was a small genius: “When he was five he could calculate the square and cube root of multi-digit numbers. For fun, he would crouch down under the table and, without pen or paper, carry out the most difficult calculations in his head using logarithms…” and after his study he went to work in the famous group of nuclear physicists of “Via Panisperna boys” in Rome, having Enrico Fermi as team leader .
He was a complex personality like that of every genius and he disappeared a day in March 1938 in the middle of a ship journey from Palermo to Naples. A mystery and different hypotheses, also emerging from the particular historical period at the threshold of World War II. Salvatore Esposito, is a world-leader in this topics. In his book he traces the life, not only professional, of this young scientist with the help of several witnesses like his colleagues or his large family, throwing new light on this important figure, including also unpublished contributions. But at the end the mystery still remains unresolved today, continuing to fascinate anybody who approaches it.