Genius compared to Einstein. In 1938, he disappeared without a trace.
In 1938, the Italian physicist Ettore Majorana suddenly vanished. Was the genius, often compared to Einstein and Fermi, committed suicide, or did he choose a life in a monastery? Or perhaps he began working on Hitler’s super weapons?
They met for the first time in the fall of 1927 at the Sapienza University of Rome. The future co-creator of the atomic bomb, Enrico Fermi, was 26 years old and had just taken over the chair of physics. The 21-year-old Ettore Majorana was his most talented student. Eleven years later, as Fermi received the Nobel Prize in Stockholm for “producing new radioactive elements in neutron reactions,” the search for the missing Majorana was underway across Italy. He was last seen on March 25, 1938, aboard the ship “Tirrenia” between Palermo and Naples. Since then, all traces of the physicist disappeared.
Who was Ettore Majorana?
Born in 1906 in Catania, Ettore Majorana amazed with his extraordinary mathematical abilities even as a child. After graduating, following in the footsteps of his grandfather and father, he began studying engineering. He did not complete his studies because he decided to switch to physics. By the late 1920s, this discipline was experiencing a golden age in Italy. In addition to the aforementioned Fermi, who headed the Physics Institute on Panisperna Street in Rome, world-renowned physicists included Franco Rasetti, Emilio Segrè (Nobel laureate in 1959), Bruno Pontecorvo, Edoardo Amaldi, and Enrico Volterra. They all went down in Italian history as the “boys from Panisperna Street.” Majorana was one of them.
Although over 80 years have passed since the mysterious disappearance of the brilliant physicist, the Italian prosecution definitively closed the case only a few years ago. It ruled that Ettore Majorana left the country and lived under an assumed name in Venezuela from 1955 to 1959. However, investigators failed to answer the key question: why did the outstanding physicist, whom Fermi compared to Galileo and Newton, leave Italy? The fate of his final notes also remains a mystery.
Amaldi, describing Majorana’s first visit to Fermi years later, stated that the conversation focused on Fermi’s research, specifically on the b (now known as the Thomas-Fermi model or approximation). Majorana listened attentively, asked several additional questions, and left without a word. When he appeared the next day, he asked for a table of parameter values (the research required complex calculations) and compared it with a hastily scribbled note in his pocket, on which he had written his own calculations made in just a few hours. Since the results matched, he told Fermi that his table was good, and two days later, he moved to the department led by Fermi.
On July 6, 1929, he defended his doctoral thesis on nuclear decay reactions with distinction. He then published several papers on atomic physics, which brought him recognition. According to Amaldi, Majorana was a pioneer in the field of nuclear research. Before James Chadwick discovered and described a new particle in the atomic nucleus called the neutron in 1932 (for which he received the Nobel Prize three years later), Majorana proposed a model in which neutrons and protons formed the nucleus, interacting with each other through the exchange of intermediary particles. However, despite the pressure from the Italian physics community, he refused to publish his theory.
Therefore, when Werner Heisenberg’s work on the description of nuclear forces was published on July 19, 1932, Majorana’s colleagues were disappointed. They believed that the scientist deprived his country of credit. Majorana replied, “Heisenberg wrote everything that could be said, and probably said too much.”
What happened to the physics genius?
In January 1938, Majorana began lecturing at the University of Naples. According to letters written to his mother, he led a reclusive life. He lived in the cheap “Bologna” hotel, which he only left to attend classes or for long solitary walks. He only developed a closer acquaintance with the director of the Physics Institute, Antonio Carrelli. He was the recipient of Majorana’s last letters. Each of them astonished Carrelli.
In the first letter, sent on March 25 at the port of Naples (presumably before boarding the ship to Palermo), Majorana wrote, “I have made a decision that is irreversible. There is not a shred of selfishness in it, but I realize the inconvenience that my sudden disappearance may cause you and the students.”
On March 26, from the “Grand Hotel Sole” in Palermo, Majorana sent a telegram to Carrelli, in which… he asked not to take his previous correspondence seriously. A few hours later, he sent an express mail:
“The sea rejected me, and tomorrow I return to the hotel ‘Bologna,’ perhaps I will be traveling with this letter.”
Majorana also announced that he intended to resign from his lectures and promised to explain everything upon his return. However, he did not, and since then, there has been no trace of him.
Despite personal interest from Benito Mussolini, who offered a reward of 30,000 lire for help in finding the genius (a significant sum considering that the average monthly salary was less than a thousand lire, and the dream car for most Italians, the two-seater Fiat Topolino, cost 8,900 lire) — the physicist was not located. Neither alive nor dead.
Dead or newly born
During a search at the “Bologna” hotel in Naples, a letter was found in which Majorana asked his family not to exaggerate with mourning: “If you really want to respect customs, wear black clothes, but no longer than for three days.” This suggestion alone indicated that the physicist planned to commit suicide — perhaps by jumping overboard. The hitch was that the sea never threw his body ashore.
Some doubt whether the genius reached Palermo, to the “Grand Hotel Sole.” Others doubt whether he boarded the “Tirrenia” ship returning from Sicily to Naples. Professor Vittorio Strazzieri, traveling in the same three-person cabin as Majorana, did testify that he saw him on board in the morning, but he did not know Majorana personally. Simply put, when shown the missing person in a photograph, he seemed similar to a fellow passenger on the ship. On the other hand, the other man sharing the same bunk, a certain Charles Price (the name on the ticket), was never interrogated.
Significantly, the modest Majorana requested on January 22, 1938 — two months before his disappearance — to withdraw his share of his father’s inheritance. He collected the money in March, a few days before the trip to Palermo. At the same time, he also received a scholarship with arrears from the day he took over the chair. In total, it was a huge amount.
Not only Majorana disappeared
Furthermore, along with Majorana, his passport also disappeared. This may suggest that he did not take his own life (which would go against the logical reasoning he was widely known for) but rather consciously prepared his disappearance. Interestingly, Majorana’s acquaintance, Professor Giuseppe Occhialini — who returned to Naples from Brazil in January 1938 — testified that the physicist was very pleased with his arrival and stated that he wouldn’t find him there in a couple of weeks.
The way Ettore Majorana contacted his closest colleague Carrelli is also puzzling. Carrelli first received a telegram, then a previously sent letter, and then an express mail. This completely baffled him. If Majorana wanted to reassure him that he had abandoned suicide, he should have called. Both the hotel in Palermo and Carrelli’s apartment had telephones. Why didn’t the genius call? Did he want to buy time? Perhaps by creating a mysterious fiction, he aimed to divert attention from his real intentions?
Hypotheses about Majorana’s disappearance
The renowned Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia put forward a romantic hypothesis that Majorana turned his back on the world, withdrawing to a monastery. The author suggested the Calabrian convent in Serra San Bruno, the Jesuit monastery in Naples, or the Abbey of St. Paschal in Portici. However, the monks denied these rumors. Then, the missing man’s family appealed to Pope Pius XII for help, but the Vatican did not respond.
However, if Majorana wanted to escape from the world behind monastery walls, did he need such a large amount of cash? And why didn’t he inform his closest relatives? After all, he came from a devout Catholic family that surely wouldn’t object to his intentions.
Another hypothesis arose due to the wanderer known as the “dog man,” who appeared in Sicily in the Mazara del Vallo area in early 1940. Because this uneducated man often solved math and physics problems for local high school students, suggestions arose that he was the wandering Majorana. Interestingly, the homeless man had a scar on his right hand identical to the missing scientist’s and leaned on a cane, on which Majorana’s date of birth was carved! When he died in 1973, a ceremony was held, attended by unfamiliar people — as if it were not the funeral of a destitute beggar without a penny to his name and without a roof over his head, but someone completely different, more important. However, this thread was officially (though not necessarily convincingly) cut off in 1988 by prosecutor Paolo Borsellino. Referring to the graphological analysis of signatures of the “dog man” from various times (including from prison), he stated that he was a certain Tommas Lipari, not the sought-after physicist.
The most popular hypothesis was that Majorana went to Argentina. This is claimed by Erasmo Recami, one of the researchers of Majorana’s biography and work. This hypothesis emerged in the 1950s when several people (including a retired policeman) allegedly spotted the missing man at the “Continental” hotel in Buenos Aires. Unfortunately, searches in that location ended in failure. Moreover, Majorana could not have traveled directly from Naples or Palermo to Argentina because his passport was only valid in Europe. However, he could have reached South America from Germany!
Did the Italian Prefer Hitler?
It is possible that Majorana secretly went to the Third Reich. This concept is denied because it would be a disgrace if the Italian genius worked for Hitler, but it must be considered.
Ettore Majorana, who usually did not accept invitations even from such prestigious universities as Yale or Cambridge, in 1933, was persuaded and went on a six-month scientific scholarship to Leipzig. There he met Heisenberg, a pioneer of quantum mechanics, freshly awarded with a Nobel. He then went to Copenhagen, where he had the opportunity to meet Niels Bohr and other luminaries of his time.
Although, due to his reserved character and reserved attitude, Majorana is suspected today of having Asperger’s syndrome, the genius did not isolate himself from the surrounding socio-political reality. On the contrary. While in Leipzig, he visited the editorial office of a pro-fascist newspaper to read an interview with Mussolini intended for publication the next day. In letters to his mother, he admired the order imposed by the Nazis. He informed, among other things, that “persecution of Jews cheers up the Aryan majority” and that “in Berlin, where over 50 percent of prosecutors were of Hebrew origin, one-third of them have already been eliminated.”
In a similar tone, he wrote to Emilio Segrè, a colleague from the Institute of Physics. Because of this, Segrè almost broke off relations with Majorana, and two years later — when marrying a German Jewess — did not invite him to the wedding. It can boldly be assumed that also the head of the department Enrico Fermi, whose wife Laura had Jewish origins, did not share the views of his extraordinarily gifted former student. Over the following years, the genius did not change his views. In one of his last letters, written to his mother in 1938 just before disappearing, he joyfully reported the upcoming visit of Adolf Hitler to Naples. Even Majorana’s father held this unusual enthusiasm for Hitler against him!
Is Ettore Majorana Kidnapped?
Perhaps Majorana was deceived or abducted by German intelligence agents for the needs of the Nazi atomic program? This hypothesis is unlikely because by the end of 1938, Fermi himself did not understand that the experiments conducted by his team in 1934 led to the fission of nuclei, so he did not anticipate the possibility of realizing a chain reaction of fissions. Even if Majorana’s brilliant intuition revealed such a picture, how could others have known about it, since he had not published any scientific work since 1933?
However, the scientist could have voluntarily traveled to Germany, which he admired so much! Professor Giorgio Dragoni from the University of Bologna is convinced that Majorana secretly went to Germany, where he worked for the Third Reich. Dragoni stated that in 1974, Italian physicist Prof. Gilberto Bernardini, who worked in a German institution called the Imperial Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science in Berlin from 1934 to 1937, informed him of this. According to Dragoni, Majorana made the decision to go to Germany even during his scholarship in Leipzig, during conversations with Heisenberg. According to Dragoni, this hypothesis was confirmed in 1990 by the youngest of the boys from Panisperna Street — Bruno Pontecorvo. During a meeting in Florence, he stated that Majorana “chose the West,” specifying that it referred to the Third Reich. By the way, Pontecorvo himself chose the East: in 1950, he secretly went to the USSR, where he obtained Soviet citizenship and worked until his death.
Arcangelo Papi, a lawyer and well-known researcher of Ettore Majorana’s biography, agrees with Dragoni’s version. According to him, the physicist from Catania was in Germany as the head of nuclear research for the armaments industry and directly answered to Hitler. According to Papi, it was Majorana who accompanied the Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann in a photo taken on board the ship “Giovanna” sailing to Argentina in 1950, and included in the book “The Nazi Hunters” by Simon Wiesenthal titled “Justice, Not Revenge.”
Accidental Discovery
In 2011, the well-known TV program “Chi l’ha visto?” — specializing in finding missing persons — was looking for a certain resident of Sicily named Majorana. Francesco Fasani was one of the first to call the editorial office, telling the story of a fellow countryman he met in the 1950s while he was emigrating in Venezuela:
“I worked as a mechanic and regularly repaired his car — a yellow Studebaker, always full of notebooks and various papers, which I tried to organize somehow when he became a regular customer. Although we knew each other for five years, I knew little about him because Mr. Bini (as he introduced himself) seemed very reserved; I didn’t even know his name. In any case, he was very polite. Sometimes he gave me rides. Once, I remember, he drove me to work. When he left, the workshop owner asked: ‘Do you know who he is? He’s the famous scientist Majorana!’”
The interviewer immediately realized that it was not the sought-after Majorana, but the physicist with the same name. Following this lead, the prosecutor opened an investigation. Although the government in Caracas refused any cooperation, Italian investigators became convinced that the man living in Valencia, Venezuela, from 1955 to 1959 under the name Bini was none other than the brilliant physicist from Catania!
The physiognomic expertise of a photo taken by Fasani in 1955 (he loved to photograph the people around him) showed a resemblance between “Mr. Bini” and Majorana, as well as Majorana’s father at a similar age. Prosecutor Pierfilippo Laviani also pointed out that Fasani found a postcard in Bini’s car, which Majorana’s uncle — physicist Quirico Majorana — sent in 1920 to the American scientist W.G. Gonklina! It is unknown in what unlikely way this postcard ended up in the hands of Ettore Majorana hiding in Venezuela 35 years later.
Another False Lead
The version of the Italian prosecutor from 2015, indicating the Venezuelan trail, raises doubts. However, it is not the final word in the case of the disappearance of the brilliant physicist. Several years ago, the book “Il Segreto di Majorana. Due uomini, una macchina” was published. Its author, Alfredo Ravelli, describes the story of Rolando Pelizza, who claims that since 1938, he was a student, and later a collaborator, of Majorana, who was staying in a monastery. Together, they supposedly constructed a machine capable of producing antiparticles, capable of generating pure energy at zero cost.
The book published two photos of Majorana and several of his letters to Pelizza. After a graphological analysis of the 23-page letter dated February 26, 1964, conducted by forensic expert Sala Chantal, it was unequivocally determined that it was written by Majorana. However, Erasmo Recami, a renowned researcher of the physicist’s biography who also wrote the introduction to this controversial book, is skeptical about their credibility. Could this be another false lead?
Recami, during more than thirty years of research, reached many people who knew the physicist from Catania. Among them was also the sister of the missing genius — Maria. She stated that it made no sense to search for her brother’s body; it would be much more important to find his last notebooks! It is certain that Majorana left a significant portion of his notes just before his disappearance to his student Gilda Senatore, whom he likely had a crush on. Gilda showed them to her future husband Francesco Cennamo, an assistant at the Department of Physics at the University of Naples. He then passed them on to director Antonio Carrelli, a friend of Majorana. And that’s where the trail ends.
Although it is unknown what the notes contained, researchers have no doubt that their disappearance is a great loss for science. There is no exaggeration in this, as just a few works left after Majorana place him among the most outstanding physicists of the 20th century.
What Really Happened to Ettore Majorana?
Some of them were translated into English only after thirty years, and they began to be cited as pioneering works. The summaries made during his stay in Naples (so-called Volumetti, kept in the Domus Galilaeana in Pisa) are still being analyzed.
In 2006, Fabio Majorana, the physicist’s nephew, came across a document filed by his father in 1938 with a notary (why Luciano Majorana deposited it in the law office remains another mystery), which mentioned Ettore’s advanced research on magnetic conductivity and matter and antimatter. Could this have been the subject of the genius’s last notes? Unfortunately, the mysterious notes disappeared. Just like the genius himself. Myths and speculations remain.
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