That is the Majorana a fascinating figure in the history of our culture. It was without doubt one of the most brilliant scientific minds of the last century, the only possible comparison with what I think Albert Einstein, but a character peculiar to say the least and the early death consigned to the wealth of specific knowledge of the physical if not for the way of the early death that made it almost a media star.
Leonardo Sciascia, his countryman, devoted to "Case Majorana" a wonderful book, widely and rightly quoted by Magueijo. But the great physicist was much more of his mysterious departure from the scene: that he committed suicide by throwing himself into the sea or withdrawn from the world by turning in a convent, or has been kidnapped by a mysterious phantom emissaries of foreign power, what is important to him is a scientific work that was limited to the vagaries of his character and the shortness of its season, however, continues to be a source of potential developments theoretical and practical knowledge to more than seven decades since his traces are lost. And what is really fascinating about him again is his death: man and scientist Ettore Majorana was tormented and complex.
The author, physicist and cosmologist João Magueijo
Madness is a term that is often used inappropriately, when you are not able to interpret the complexity that goes beyond compliance with the norms in which our thoughts and behaviors are programmed (by relatives, by schools, institutions, and today, alas, by a plethora of aggressive media and surface). Majorana is sometimes described as crazy, why is it so difficult to grasp the reasons for his discomfort, his inability to relate to those patterns of behavior and thought-coded - and madness is a term so easy and convenient, perfect for patterns of thought incapable of slightest effort to understand the complexity. L 'idea of \u200b\u200ba man totally absorbed from his studies and so far from common sense, even deranged is devoid of any validity.
It is difficult to understand in depth the causes and ramifications of behavior that asocial was: in the strict sense of inability to comply with the proper conventions of its environment and society in general, and the consequent discomfort that led him to isolate himself socially but also intellectually. Neither, however, the complexity of Majorana is exhausted in its shadows: How Magueijo stubbornly and skillfully reveals he was equipped with an ingenious humor and subtle (perhaps too subtle for those around him), and in the right company and with a few chosen friends was far from closed. The shy man, unwilling to publish his work, however, had a very strong sense of theatricality, he liked to impress - even dazzle - the other with his intellect. The unresolved relationship with female sex (with sex in general: he does not know any report) does not complete the picture, makes it even more nebulous for the inability to determine its final weight in the personality and life of this man of genius. Majorana across the political climate, but above all social, fascism, shut. What is apparent is that he was acutely aware of the ridiculous and grotesque aspects of a rogue regime and that wiped out the few good results obtained with the Risorgimento, but it was not remotely interested in politics. It may seem strange in the exponent of a family, even if affirmed recently in the generations immediately prior to the Hector had given prominent politicians to Italy, but in this the great physicist seems to me to till the indignation of some Sicilian aristocracy, if not deeply ammanicato, he just throws it highly. And seeking what helped to shape this man so multifaceted and difficult, so elusive to the definitions and investigations (not mundane ones on his death) inevitably comes to a family as a whole emerges as no less than kaleidoscopic, difficult to frame, contradictory and not reducible to simplicity of its most illustrious. A material - human, intellectual, cultural - that is seen only as a great and very talented storyteller from portato per il dettaglio fine e le architetture letterarie complesse avrebbe potuto immaginare. E che invece fu un uomo vivo e arduo da accostare e interpretare. Riportato amorevolmente in vita in questo libro, seppure nei limiti di un tale accidentato attingimento.
Credo che per scrivere una buona biografia di un uomo di scienza ne serva un altro, per poter comprendere a fondo quell’aspetto così determinante che è la creatività scientifica nei suoi risvolti tecnici e psicologici; e a sua volta Magueijo è brillante uomo di scienza, capace di costruzioni intellettuali coraggiose e non conformistiche (il fisico portoghese è stato tra coloro che hanno sviluppato l’ipotesi della variabilità della velocità della luce, tra l’altro negli istanti iniziali dell’universo quando, secondo tale teoria, essa sarebbe stata superiore per decine di ordini di grandezza). Si dimostra anche un divulgatore affascinante e limpido, aspetto importante per il lettore non tecnico, visto che le parti in cui ci si addentra nell’illustrazione di argomenti di fisica non esattamente elementare (specie i risvolti più recenti) sono numerosi.
Da buon fisico teorico, Magueijo non si sottrae alle seduzioni delle ipotesi e delle speculazioni, but in tracing the human story of Majorana also adheres scrupulously to the facts for us to be reconstructed. And the rest of his story emerges from these facts that are a few, with urgency and clarity. It 'just exploring, investigating, almost dissected after the fact that the Majorana leads Magueijo to appear on the pages of his book. He dispassionately analyzes the relationship with a family that lived together and stiffness closures and intellectual recklessness, without forcing psychological interpretations that are not obtainable for the reader to what he offers to his reading, showing the unique function of stimulus that it had, and the struggle of abnormal personality like that of Ettore Majorana within its meshes. Of extraordinary vividness is the reconstruction of the relationship with the Majorana "Panisperna Street Boys", the talented group of physics in the late '20s and early '30s were coming together at the Institute of Physics, University of Rome under the wing of its director, Orso Mario Corbino: various Enrico Fermi, Franco Rasetti, Edoardo Amaldi, Emilio Segre, Bruno Pontecorvo and others. A report, which is well beyond the hagiographies and heroic mythologies that have shaped the saint of the Italic group of heroes, was, for Majorana, even before the rivalry, substantial alienation. Fact antithetical to the personality of Majorana and Fermi, che dei “Ragazzi” era il perno oltre che il capo, perché vi potesse essere una minima sintonia. Antitetiche per preparazione culturale e per spirito (perfino per intelligenza e creatività scientifiche – ma chiunque rischiava la magra figura a confronto di Majorana). E se Fermi sviluppò questa contrapposizione in termini di competitività e risentimento, la reazione di Majorana fu – prevedibilmente – più complessa. Egli tese a marcare nei fatti la sua estraneità, rifiutando una vera incardinazione nel sistema universitario e dell’Istituto romano (essa avverrà solo pochi mesi prima della sua scomparsa e all’università di Napoli), e appare aver sempre calato dall’alto i frutti of his intellect in the non-linear association with the "boys", not to mention that the display of his talent in the face of other physicists often was done tastefully mischievous.
Majorana seems to have always shown a paradoxical attitude toward the fruits of his genius which I said, and which did not seem to care at all: there are a lot of feedback - and there is no reason per altro per non credere alle affermazioni di uomini che non avevano ragione per essere teneri o benevolenti con lui – sul fatto che egli abbia anticipato molti risultati della fisica nucleare degli anni ’30, ma che buttasse, alla lettera, i suoi studi nella carta straccia. A tutto questo si aggiunge il “buco nero” degli anni dal 1933 al 1937, durante i quali visse e lavorò rinchiuso in casa: la produzione scientifica di quel periodo andò perduta completamente dopo la sua scomparsa, apparentemente più che altro per incuria.
Sotto il profilo letterario Magueijo risulta assai convincente nell’applicazione di uno stile colloquiale and directed to effectively and promptly, and showing a real talent as a story-telling that's not lacking even in the early sections where it dwells in the details of the scientific work of Majorana, and others.
course Magueijo does not escape nothing in the call of the Majorana cause celebre, his evaporate into thin air at the end of March 1938. How could it? Not only is it an integral part of the personality the Italian physicist, but is inevitably one of the big reasons that arouse interest in his figure, not least in the same author of the biography. The Portuguese scientist, however, while not eluding even to speculation on the substance of what actually happened (what he does with elegance and simplicity) has the ability to insert the end of each Majorana in the mosaic of his life as an integrated piece.
That is a shame that a title, at once sublime and rigorous as A Brilliant Darkness: The Extraordinary Life and Disappearance of Ettore Majorana The Troubled Genius of the Nuclear Age should become the sensational, the most banal and inaccurate The Missing Particle - Life and Mystery of Ettore Majorana, a genius of physics . Publishers and translators tend to particular taste Italians seem trivial solutions.
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