Abstract
As soon as Ettore Majorana moved to Fermi’s group, he distinguished himself not only as an expert calculator but also by his extraordinary abilities as a researcher. In the Rome group some seminars were organised periodically on specific topics, these being held in rotation by the different members of the group. When it came to Majorana’s turn, although everybody was very attentive, only Fermi was able to understand what was presented, and sometimes even showed his “irritation” towards Ettore, accusing him of “not saying everything”, and would invite him to complete his presentation. Actually, according to accounts by some of those present, the only one in the group to hold his own with Majorana was Fermi. From the start, the relationship between them was as peer to peer, also because of the small age gap. An episode recalled by the chemist Oscar d’Agostino, who also joined the Via Panisperna group (although later), and who made notable contributions to some of their research, is illuminating. One day some students, who were coming back to the Institute in the afternoon, after the lunch break, found Fermi and Majorana in a lecture hall in front of blackboards full of calculations, shouting at each other in a lively argument. “They were calling each other fools. The argument had started at midday and they had been there several hours in a passionate discussion, forgetting of course to eat lunch”.
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Notes
- 1.
This story was provided by the engineer Gabriele Paparo, one of Amaldi’s former collaborators; he used to tell his collaborators anecdotes about his friend Ettore during breaks at work.
- 2.
See the article (Ferrieri and Magnano 1972).
- 3.
See what is quoted in Il Nuovo Cimento, 6, XIV–XVI.
- 4.
T.S. Kuhn’s interview with E. Segrè, loc. cit.
- 5.
T.S. Kuhn’s interview with R.E. Peierls, 18 June 1963.
- 6.
This anecdote too was recalled by the engineer Gabriele Paparo, already mentioned.
- 7.
Letter MG/R1 of 22 December 1929 in (Recami 1987).
- 8.
Amaldi himself tells us that: [Majorana] felt everybody was stupid, himself included. The only people who were not completely stupid according to him were Dirac and Weyl. He greatly respected Weyl. Heisenberg was stupid. Everyone else was stupid. Even himself. He would not say that the others were stupid and he was clever. No, he was convinced that he was a fool. […] Pauli was rather stupid. But Majorana was stupid as well, he was convinced of that. This gave him a feeling of emptiness.
- 9.
T.S. Kuhn’s interview with E. Amaldi, 8 April 1963.
- 10.
T.S. Kuhn’s interview with R.E. Peierls, loc. cit.
- 11.
Another example of the incipient shift in interest in Italy is provided by the Institute of Physics in Naples, directed by Antonio Carrelli. Perhaps drawn by Fermi’s euphoria, Carrelli originally took an interest in the physics of the nucleus, but the main topic of research conducted in his institute (and later, the only one) remained atomic and molecular spectroscopy. This decision, possibly due to the limited means available, did not take the same happy turn as the Rome group.
- 12.
T.S. Kuhn’s interview with E. Amaldi, loc. cit.
- 13.
C. Weiner’s interview with E. Feenberg, 13 April 1973, kept at the Niels Bohr Library of the American Institute of Physics.
- 14.
The “professor of electrotechnics”, as Amaldi recalls, was Giovanni Giorgi, known for his system of physical units.
- 15.
This piece of news was referred to us by A. De Gregorio.
- 16.
Letters MG/R1 of 22 December 1929 and MG/R2 of 15 May 1930 in (Recami 1987).
- 17.
G. Gentile jr.’s letter to his family of 9 February 1931, in (Gentile 1942).
- 18.
Letter MF/L1 of 20 January 1933 in (Recami 1987).
- 19.
Letter MB/L1 of 21 January 1933 in (Recami 1987).
- 20.
Letter MF/L2 of 22 January 1933 in (Recami 1987).
- 21.
Letter MF/L4 of 14 February 1933 in (Recami 1987).
- 22.
Letter MF/L4, loc. cit.
- 23.
Letter MF/L5 of 18 February 1933 in (Recami 1987).
- 24.
Letter MF/L6 of 22 February 1933 in (Recami 1987).
- 25.
C. Weiner’s interview with E. Feenberg, loc. cit.
- 26.
T.S. Kuhn’s interview with W. Heisenberg, 28 February 1963, Session no. 10.
- 27.
T.S. Kuhn’s interview to W. Heisenberg, loc. cit.
- 28.
T.S. Kuhn’s interview to W. Heisenberg, 5 July 1963, Session no. 11.
- 29.
Interview to A. Recknagel in F. and D. Dubini, La scomparsa di Ettore Majorana, television programme aired in 1987 by Swiss TV.
- 30.
Testimony T4 in (Recami 1987).
- 31.
Letter MF/L5, loc. cit.
- 32.
T.S. Kuhn’s interview with W. Heisenberg, 5 July 1936, loc. cit.
- 33.
Letter MB/L2 of 3 March 1933 in (Recami 1987).
- 34.
Letter MG/L1 of 7 June 1933 in (Recami 1987).
- 35.
Letter MB/L2, loc. cit.
- 36.
Letter MF/L3 of 7 February 1933 in (Recami 1987).
- 37.
Letter MG/C1 of 12 March 1933 in (Recami 1987).
- 38.
Letter MF/L6, loc. cit.
- 39.
Letter MF/L7 of 28 February 1933 in (Recami 1987).
- 40.
Letter MG/C1, loc. cit.
- 41.
Letter MG/L1, loc. cit.
- 42.
Letter MG/R4 of 27 July 1934 in (Recami 1987).
- 43.
Letter MG/R5 of 20 June 1937 in (Recami 1987).
- 44.
Letter MQ/R4 of 6 September 1933 in (Recami 1987).
- 45.
Letter MQ/R5 of 20 September 1935 in (Recami 1987).
- 46.
See, in particular, Ettore’s letter to Quirino Majorana dated 14 May 1935, kept at the Museum of Physics of the University of Bologna.
- 47.
An introductory, but particularly interesting, study can be found in (Dragoni 2006). The reference book is (Dragoni 2008).
- 48.
In this regard, compare the title of one of his oral theses, Su un effetto fotoelettrico constatato negli “audion” (“On a photoelectric effect observed in audions”) with that of Q. Majorana’s article “Su di un fenomeno fotoelettrico constatabile con gli audion” (“On a photoelectric effect observable with audions”), in Rendiconti della R. Accademia dei Lincei, vol. 7 (1928), p. 801.
- 49.
Letter MQ/R28 of 1 September 1937 in (Recami 1987).
- 50.
Letter MQ/R29 of 16 November 1937 in (Recami 1987).
- 51.
This discovery is due to Alberto De Gregorio. See (De Gregorio and Esposito 2006).
- 52.
This last conjecture, which might easily be described as fanciful, has nevertheless one verifiable premise. Anyone interested in this may, for example, take a look at the courses given by Fermi (or others) at the University of Rome, paying a visit to the university archive, where they are still kept. Anyone who does this will not fail to notice the lack of a syllabus for Fermi’s earth physics course, given in 1928, lectures that were also followed by Majorana, as we have seen. Such an omission would not be surprising at all if it had been known that the aforementioned document was to be found among Majorana’s papers deposited by Amaldi at the Domus Galileana in Pisa, as observed by both De Gregorio and myself in 2005. For the moment, we do not have any plausible explanation for this.
- 53.
Letter MQ/R14 of 16 January 1936 in (Recami 1987).
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Esposito, S. (2017). A Certain Interest in Pure Science. In: Ettore Majorana. Springer Biographies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54319-2_2
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