22 Facts About Ettore Majorana

In 2006, the Ettore Majorana Prize was established in his memory.

Mathematically gifted, Ettore Majorana began his university studies in engineering in 1923, but switched to physics in 1928 at the urging of Emilio Segre.

Ettore Majorana 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.

Ettore Majorana's first paper, published in 1928, was written when he was an undergraduate and it was coauthored by Giovanni Gentile, Jr.

In 1931, Ettore Majorana published the first paper on the phenomenon of autoionization in atomic spectra, which he called "spontaneous ionization"; an independent paper in the same year, published by Allen Shenstone of Princeton University, called it "auto-ionization", a name first used by Pierre Auger.

Ettore Majorana earned his Laurea in physics at the University of Rome La Sapienza in 1929.

Ettore Majorana was the first to interpret correctly the experiment as requiring a new particle that had a neutral charge and a mass about the same as the proton; this particle is the neutron.

Ettore Majorana was known for not seeking credit for his discoveries, considering his work to be trivial.

In letters he subsequently wrote to Heisenberg, Ettore Majorana revealed that he had found in him, not only a scientific colleague, but a warm personal friend.

Ettore Majorana worked on a theory of the nucleus which, in its treatment of exchange forces, represented a further development of Heisenberg's theory of the nucleus.

Ettore Majorana travelled to Copenhagen that year, where he worked with Niels Bohr, another Nobel Prize winner, and a friend and mentor of Heisenberg.

Ettore Majorana was a member of the National Fascist Party, having joined on 31 July 1933.

Ettore Majorana recommended to his mother, who wanted to learn German, a newspaper that "became fascist overnight after Hitler imposed changes in the editorial board".

Ettore Majorana endorsed antisemitic views by suggesting that discrimination against Jews was justified as a means to "repress a socially harmful mentality," implying that such measures were necessary to make room for a new generation.

Professor of Italian Joseph Francese contends that Leonardo Sciascia's narrative regarding Ettore Majorana's disappearance is primarily a literary construct designed to stimulate debate over the ethical responsibilities of scientists rather than an accurate historical account.

Ettore Majorana's last-published paper, in 1937, was an elaboration of a symmetrical theory of electrons and positrons.

Ettore Majorana predicted that in the class of particles known as fermions, there should be particles that are their own antiparticles.

Ettore Majorana did prescient theoretical work on neutrino masses, an active subject of research as of 2017.

Reportedly, Ettore Majorana had withdrawn all of his money from his bank account prior to making a trip from Naples to Palermo.

In Palermo, Ettore Majorana purchased a ticket on 25 March 1938 for a boat trip to return to Naples.

Recami critically examines various hypotheses about Ettore Majorana's disappearance, including those advanced by Sciascia, and presents suggestive evidence for the proposal that Ettore Majorana travelled to Argentina.

The recipients of the 2006 Ettore Majorana Prize were Erasmo Recami and George Sudarshan ; of the 2007 Ettore Majorana Prize: Lee Smolin, Eliano Pessa and Marcello Cini.