Lost in a Sea of Asides

books & arts Lost in a sea of asides

A brilliant darkness: with many of his colleagues in Rome, and antiparticle. This work built on a 1932 paper the extraordinary vice versa, but that hardly seems to justify the in which Majorana proposed a modification Life and Mysterious vitriol that Magueijo reserves for Fermi and of Paul Dirac’s relativistic wave equation for disappearance of Segrè in particular. electrons. According to Dirac, neutrinos and When Majorana joined the institute the antineutrinos are different, and today it is ettore Majorana, the focus was on atomic physics, but it soon still not known if the neutrino is a Majorana troubled genius of shifted to nuclear physics as the neutron was particle or a Dirac particle, although the Nuclear Age discovered. Majorana was one of the first experiments on double beta decay may soon By João Magueijo physicists to realize that a ‘neutral proton’ be able to answer this question. Meanwhile, BASIC BOOKS: 2009. could explain the experimental data of the condensed-matter physicists are searching for 320PP. $27.50 time, but in a sign of things to come, he did evidence of other types of Majorana particle not write up this work. Majorana’s reluctance in superconducting systems (see, for instance, hat do we know about to publish infuriated Fermi, who had been F. Wilczek Nature Phys. 5, 614–616; 2009). Ettore Majorana? He was born scooped to the discovery of the exclusion In January 1938, Majorana started work in Win Sicily in 1906, started a principle by Wolfgang Pauli, and thereafter Naples and was last seen at the university on degree in engineering at the University of insisted on publishing results and theories as the morning of Friday 25 March, after which Rome but later changed to physics, joined soon as possible. the details become hazy. It is not known Enrico Fermi’s famous Physics Institute on Nonetheless, by the end of 1932 Majorana for sure if he ever arrived in Sicily, let alone the Via Panisperna, retreated to his bedroom had published enough papers to have the caught the ship back to Naples. Theories between 1933 and 1937, was awarded a world of theoretical physics at his feet, and about what happened to him abound — he professorship in Naples in late 1937, and in January 1933, with a generous grant committed suicide, he joined a monastery, he was last seen on 26 March 1938 on a ship in his pocket, he headed off to work with moved to Argentina … travelling from Naples to Palermo, Sicily. He Werner Heisenberg in Leipzig, where he did How much more do we need to know published just nine papers, all theoretical, but important work on the strong force, and then about Ettore Majorana? On the evidence of several of them have proved to be remarkably on to Copenhagen to work with Niels Bohr. A Brilliant Darkness, there is not a book’s influential, and their influence continues to However, things started to go wrong and by worth to know (although dozens of books increase with time. the end of the year Majorana had withdrawn about Majorana have already been published And what do we know about to his bedroom in Rome, where he was to stay in Italian). Indeed, this biography reads more João Magueijo, author of A Brilliant for the next four years. The rise of fascism like a proposal for a TV programme that Darkness? Born in Portugal in 1967, he is now in Europe, the death of his father, gastritis would involve its author travelling the length a professor of theoretical physics at Imperial and the discovery of the positron may all and breadth of Italy, drinking lots of red College in London, and his first book,Faster have contributed. wine, and interviewing Majorana’s relatives than the Speed of Light, was a highly readable Holed up in his room he continued to work and surviving acquaintances in his ‘risible and entertaining account of his work on on theoretical physics, and also on medicine, parody’ of Italian. One would only hope that a theory in which the speed of light has game theory and sociology, while his friends the editor of this hypothetical programme changed over the history of the Universe. occasionally sent in a barber to keep his hair would delete the constant stream of pointless However, it was let down in places by a tone and beard under control. Then, in 1937, and and scatological asides that become more that was described by the New York Times somewhat surprisingly, Majorana entered a irritating with each passing page, thus saving as puerile. Sadly, as we shall see, A Brilliant concorso — a competition to fill a number of its author from himself in a way that its Darkness is less readable and more juvenile university positions — and was appointed to a subject was unable to do. ❐ than its predecessor. chair in theoretical physics in Naples. The Majoranas were a family of high As part of his application he submitted reviewed by Peter rodgers achievers: Ettore’s grandfather, Salvatore, the paper for which he is best known Peter Rodgers is Chief Editor of was a physics professor turned politician today — the idea that the neutrino is its own Nature Nanotechnology. who rose to become a government minister o

and senator; his father was a successful N the science of the Oven businessman; and three of his uncles became our bookshe rectors of the university in their home town By Hervé This of Catania. Majorana’s colleagues at the COLUmBIA UNIV. PReSS: 2009. 216 PP. $22.95 / £15.95 Via Panisperna (which Magueijo, for some From the man who first suggested using ultrasonic reason, feels obliged to point out sounds sound tanks and rotary evaporators in the kitchen — similar to the Italian words for bread and and who proclaims “Down with disciplinary sperm) were equally high achievers. Two of boundaries!” (when it comes to cooking) — comes a them — Fermi and Emilio Segrè — went on new book on the physics and chemistry of food, from to win the Nobel Prize, and Eduardo Amaldi L f the molecular level to the phase transitions to the was one of the founding fathers of the CERN final sensorial properties that we experience. particle physics laboratory. It is fair to say that Majorana did not get on particularly well

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