The mysterious disappearance of the physicist Ettore Majorana

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“I was born in Catania, August 5th, 1906. I earned a high school diploma in classical studies in1923; I then regularly attended engineering studies in Rome university until the beginning of the final year. In 1928, desiring to study pure science, I requested and obtained admittance to the Faculty of Physics, and in 1929 I graduated with a degree in Theoretical Physics under the direction of S. E. Fermi, writing my thesis on Quantum Theory of radioactive nuclei and obtaining full marks and honors. In the subsequent years, I freely attended the Institute of Physics in Rome following the scientific movement and carrying out theoretical research of various nature. Uninterruptedly I took advantage of the wise and inspiring guidance of S. E. Professor Enrico Fermi1“.

L. Sciascia, La scomparsa di Majorana, 1975

The physicist Ettore Majorana

This is how Italian physicist Ettore Majorana, a member of the brilliant group of scientists known as “the boys from Via Panisperna” led by 1938 Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi, presented himself in an autobiographical text. The Catanian scholar’s field of research was quantum mechanics. Together with Heisenberg he developed the important nuclear model according to which protons and neutrons interact with each other with exchange forces. Majorana is also credited with laying the foundation for the theory of open quantum systems. He also worked on atomic spectroscopy and chemical bond theory. In the field of elementary particles he theorized the existence of particles having arbitrary spin. To some extent, finally, his studies contributed to the discovery of slow neutrons by the Via Panisperna group. This was the prerequisite for the American “Manhattan” project that a few years later led to the development of the atomic bomb.

An introverted character

Enrico Fermi described him as on par with a pure genius “like Galileo and Newton”. The physicist Ettore Majorana had a reserved and unsociable nature, leading an almost hermit-like life completely immersed in numerical calculations. The scientist from Catania even shunned the idea of sharing the studies and discoveries he was developing. Only thanks to the fervent persuasion of his colleagues, such as Fermi and Heisenberg, did he publish just ten papers during his lifetime. This is how Laura Fermi, writer and Enrico’s wife, described him:

“But Majorana was a strange person, an introvert, shy of everyone. In the morning, while riding the streetcar to the university, he would set himself to thinking, his dark brows knit together. Often an idea would come to his mind, the solution of a stubborn problem, or a theory that correlated experimental facts with one another. Then he would search his pockets for a pencil. A package of cigarettes provided paper, and on it he would scribble some figures. Out of the streetcar he would walk into the physics building, still absorbed, with bent head, while a big black mop of uncombed hair fell low on his eyes. He would look for Fermi and Rasetti, and, package of cigarettes in hand, he would expound on his idea”.

L. Fermi, Atoms in the Family, University of Chicago Press, 1995

In 1938, to everyone’s surprise, he accepted a chair at the faculty of theoretical physics at the University of Naples. On January 13 of that year he delivered his first lecture. Just a few months later Ettore Majorana disappeared into thin air. The event immediately seemed shrouded in the thickest mystery, and there was no way to shed light on it. To this day numerous hypotheses are still under consideration by investigators, and Majorana’s disappearance is an open question.

The mystery of the physicist Ettore Majorana’s disappearance

On March 25, 1938, the physicist boarded a steamer of the Tirrenia company in Naples, bound for Palermo. Nothing foreshadowed what would happen next. The only one who was aware of the strong inner unease that troubled Ettore Majorana was Antonio Carrelli, director of the Institute of Physics2. On the morning of the next day, March 26, he received a telegram from his colleague. Majorana warned him of the arrival of a missive and especially urged him not to worry about its contents. After a few hours Carrelli actually received that letter, which read:

“Naples, March 25, 1938

Dear Carrelli,

I’ve made a decision that was by then inevitable. There is no grain of selfishness in it, although I recognize the bother that my sudden disappearance will bring to you and the students. I ask your forgiveness also for this, but above all for having betrayed the trust, sincere friendship, and kindness that you have demonstrated to me over these months. I ask you also to give my best to all who I came to know and respect at your institute, Sciuti in particular, and for whom I will hold dear memories at least until eleven o’clock this evening, and possibly thereafter”.

E. Recami, The Majorana case. Letters, documents, testimonies, World Scientific, 2020

Whatever was to happen that night, it did not. The next day again Carrelli received another missive, written on a letterhead of a Palermo hotel, the Grand Hotel Sole, testifying that Majorana had arrived at his destination:

Palermo, March 26, 1938

Dear Carrelli,

I hope that the telegram and the letter arrived together. The sea has refused me and tomorrow I will return to the Bologna Hotel [in Naples], perhaps together with this letter. I do, however, intend to renounce my teaching post. Do not take me for an “Ibsenian girl” because the case is different. I am at your disposal for additional details”.

E. Recami, The Majorana case. Letters, documents, testimonies, World Scientific, 2020

Nevertheless, on the morning of March 28 Majorana did not show up at the Institute of Physics. This was his last letter since from that moment there was no trace of him, either dead or alive.

Carrelli notified Majorana family immediately. A poignant message was found in the hotel room where he was staying in Naples:

Naples, March 25, 1938

I have just one wish: that you do not wear black. If you wish to mourn me then do so, but not for more than three days.1 Afterward, if you can, keep my memory in your hearts, and forgive me”.

E. Recami, The Majorana case. Letters, documents, testimonies, World Scientific, 2020

The search began almost immediately, coordinated by Police Chief Arturo Bocchini. Mussolini himself urged the discovery of the Catanian physicist.

The investigation: was it really suicide?

At dawn on March 27, another Tirrenia steamer, sailing in the opposite direction, docked at the port of Naples. It was just another service voyage, but a professor at the University of Palermo, Vittorio Strazzeri, possibly met Ettore Majorana. The professor told investigators that he shared a berth with a young man very similar to the physicist from Catania. This is an important testimony since at that time Majorana was already reported missing.

The investigation focused on finding a body at sea. But nothing was discovered, so much so that Bocchini was prompted to doubt that it was a suicide. Then, he stated that “the dead can be found, it is the living that can disappear.” What is more, the investigation made it possible to discover that Majorana had withdrawn a large amount of money, about five salaries in arrears, and probably had his international passport with him, a document that was never found again3. A sailor, moreover, told of spotting the scholar near the landing. The Tirrenia company, according to some unconfirmed sources, was reportedly in possession of a ticket attesting to his disembarkation.

The speculation about the disappearance of Ettore Majorana

Did Ettore Majorana really die by suicide, as the letters sent to his friend Carelli might suggest? Or rather did he prefer to disappear, sensing the devastating consequences of his studies, which a few years later would lead to the construction of the atomic bomb? After all, in the years before his disappearance he was going around saying that “physics is on a wrong track. We are all on a wrong path4.

If Majorana did not die by suicide at sea, it was thought that after landing he found lodging in some convent in the Naples area. In his youth he had in fact attended the Jesuit order. Leonardo Sciascia reports in this regard the response of the guardian father of San Pasquale convent in Portici, when asked where the Catanian physicist might be hiding: “Why do you want to know where he is? The important thing is that he is happy”. Sciascia himself, however, did not believe that Majorana ever boarded the Tirrenia ship for Naples, remaining in Palermo:

“According to police findings, on the evening of the same day, at seven o’clock, Maiorana boarded the steamer for Naples; and in Naples he disembarked the next day, at 5:45. But we have some doubts: and not in the hypothesis that he threw himself overboard on the return trip, but in the hypothesis that he did not board the steamer on the evening of the 26th, in Palermo”.

L. Sciascia, La scomparsa di Majorana, 1975

According to the writer, Majorana shut himself away in the Carthusian monastery of Serra San Bruno in Calabria, perhaps to cure himself of an illness or withdraw from social life following a crisis of faith. Interestingly, when Pope John Paul II visited there in 1984 he mentioned Majorana among those who stayed there.5

The other hypotheses

Another hypothesis states that Ettore Majorana emigrated to Germany, to serve the Third Reich, and then to Argentina after the end of World War II.

More recent, however, is the speculation about Venezuela6. Following an investigation by the Italian TV show “Chi l’ha Visto?” in 2008, the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Rome opened the file. Francesco Fasani, an emigrant who was a mechanic in Caracas, declared to have recognized Majorana. Majorana allegedly lived there under the false name of Bini in the 1950s. In support of this were photographic comparison and a copy of a postcard found by Fasani in his car while he was making repairs. It could be a missive by Majorana’s uncle Quirino, sent to discuss physics problems. The Public Prosecutor’s Office asked to dismiss the case in 2015, establishing that Majorana had “voluntarily moved abroad, staying in Venezuela at least during the period between 1955 and 1959.”

A mystery still without a definitive solution

Not everyone agreed with the conclusions of these investigations, based on weak circumstantial evidence. The case of Ettore Majorana’s disappearance still represents a puzzle of difficult solution, where everything seems possible and nothing is obvious. The events, the manner, and the contours of the mystery are symptomatic of the physicist’s personality, even of the studies he himself carried out and whose future consequences he feared for humanity. All that remains is to conclude with the words of Enrico Fermi, which have the power to encapsulate and summarize the whole story:

With his intelligence, once he had decided to disappear or to make his body disappear, Majorana would certainly have succeeded. Majorana had what no one else in the world has. But unfortunately, he lacked what is instead common in other men, plain good sense“. 

Samuele Corrente Naso

Notes

  1. L. Sciascia, La scomparsa di Majorana, Milano, Adelphi, 1997. ↩︎
  2. E. Recami, Il caso Majorana. Epistolario, documenti, testimonianze, Di Renzo Editore, Roma, 2011. ↩︎
  3. All the documents of the investigation are now kept in Rome at the Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Series PS-1939-A1, envelope 51. ↩︎
  4. Ibidem note 1. ↩︎
  5. Ibidem note 1. ↩︎
  6. Ibidem note 2. ↩︎

Author

Samuele is the founder of Indagini e Misteri, a blog on anthropology, history and art. He has a degree in forensic biology and works for the Ministry of Culture. For pleasure he studies unusual and ancient things, such as unclear symbols or enigmatic apotropaic rituals. He pursues the mystery through adventure but inexplicably it is is always one step further.

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