Chronology of the life and work
1906
5 August
Ettore Majorana was born in Catania to Fabio Massimo (1875-1934)
and Salvatrice (Dorina) Corso (1876-1965), fourth of five sons
(Rosina, Salvatore, Luciano, Ettore and Maria).
1921
The Majorana family moved from Sicily to Rome.
1923
July
He left school (Liceo-Ginnasio Statale "Torquato Tasso" in Rome) at the
age of 17.
3 November
He joined the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Rome.
1927
He started to write the “Volumetti”, personal notebooks where he wrote
down his own studies and/or researches (the date reported in the first
of the five notebooks is 8 March 1927).
Summer
E. Amaldi and E. Segrè, students in Engineering, decided to follow
the appeal launched by the Director of the Institute of Physics in
Rome, O.M. Corbino, and joined the Fermi group (the formal passage
was registered on November 1927 for Segrè and on February 1928 for
Amaldi).
Autumn
Segrè encouraged Majorana to meet Fermi; after such meeting, he passed
from Engineering to Physics (the formal passage was registered on 19
November 1928).
1928
In collaboration with G. Gentile jr. he published his first paper
(1),
following the spectroscopic researches of the Fermi group (the paper
was presented at the Accademia dei Lincei on 24 July).
29 December
Still University student, he participated at the XXII General Meeting of
the Italian Physical Society (directed by his uncle Quirino), delivering a
talk entitled Ricerca di un’espressione generale delle correzioni di
Rydberg, valevole per atomi neutri o ionizzati positivamente (the summary
of his talk is reported in Il Nuovo Cimento, Vol.6 (1929) pp. XIV-XVI,
while the original work is in the Volumetto II.)
1929
6 July
He graduated with a master degree in Physics; his dissertation was titled
La teoria quantistica dei nuclei radioattivi. It is the first time that, in
the Rome group headed by Fermi, a topic of Nuclear Physics was studied.
1931
He published two papers (2)
(4) on the chemical bond of molecules
and two more papers (3)
(5) on spectroscopic researches.
1932
He published two more papers (6) (7). In the first of this, which was stimulated by Segrè, he studied for the first time, from a
theoretical point of view, the non-adiabatic spin-flip, whose transition
probability was independently obtained by Landau and Zener in the
same year. Such process was later reconsidered by I. Rabi in 1937 and
by F. Bloch and I. Rabi in 1945. In the second article, instead, for the
first time he introduced the simplest infinite-dimensional representations of the
Lorentz group, anticipating the works by E. Wigner in 1939 and 1948.
March
After the discovery of the neutron by J. Chadwick, he revealed to the
other people of the Fermi group that he was working on a theory of light
nuclei made of only protons and neutrons (without electrons). Although
encouraged by Fermi and his group, he decided to not publish his work.
An analogous theory, with some defects, was published independently
by W. Heisenberg in the following July.
12 November
He got the “Libera docenza” degree in Theoretical Physics at the University of Rome.
1933
January
Upon suggestion of E. Fermi, he obtained a fellowship from the Italian
C.N.R. for visiting the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Leipzig headed
by Heisenberg.
19 January
In the evening he arrived at Leipzig.
3 March
Encouraged by Heisenberg, he finally sent, to the German journal Zeitschrift fur Physik, his paper (8) on nuclear theory, whose main result was already obtained one year before and where he corrected the
Heisenberg theory on nuclear interactions.
4 March
From Leipzig he moved to Copenhagen, where he stayed for about one
month at the Institute of Theoretical Physics directed by N. Bohr.
15 April
He left Copenhagen for coming back to Rome for the Easter holidays.
May
At the University of Rome he presented the programme for a course on
Mathematical Methods of Quantum Mechanics, never effectively
delivered. [Fronte] [Retro]
5 May
He came back to Leipzig for continuing his visit.
11 May
Upon request of the Italian C.N.R., he sent to the official journal of this
agency,La Ricerca Scientifica, the Italian version of the paper (8) published in German.
July
The Majorana family (the mother of Ettore with his sisters Rosina and
Maria and his brother Salvatore) visited Ettore in Leipzig.
5 August
He definitively came back to Rome.
1934
His father died; such tragic event had a strong influence on his following
life.
1935
30 April
At the University of Rome he presented the programme for a course on
Mathematical Methods of Atomic Physics, never effectively delivered. [Fronte] [Retro]
1936
28 April
At the University of Rome he presented the programme for a course on
Quantum Electrodynamics, never effectively delivered. [Fronte] [Retro]
1937
He published his last paper (9), where he presented results obtained
some years before. It contained the fundamental theory on the Majorana
neutrino, which was recovered twenty years after in order to explain the
phenomena related to the problem of the neutrino mass.
June
He decided to participate to the competition of a full professorship in
Theoretical Physics requested by the University of Palermo (by means
of E. Segrè). Among the participants we find G. Gentile jr, L. Pincherle,
G. Racah, G. Wataghin, G.C. Wick.
25 October
The judging committee for the competition (headed by Fermi) met for
the first time, and immediately stopped its work in order to send a
letter to the Minister of Education with the request to give a chair in
Theoretical Physics to Majorana “for high and well deserved repute”,
independently of the usual competition rules.
2 November
The Minister of Education accepted the request and appointed
Majorana as full professor at the University of Naples (starting from the
following 16 November).
1938
10 or 11 January
He arrived in Naples to take up the chair of Theoretical Physics.
13 January
At 9.00 he delivered the opening lecture for his course on Theoretical
Physics. His family arrived from Rome for the occasion.
15 January
He effectively started his course to students (which was usually delivered
on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday of each week).
12 March
After having delivered his lecture, for the last time he visited his family
in Rome.
24 March
He delivered his last lecture (N.21) to students.
25 March
In the morning he went to the Institute of Physics of Naples to give a
folder with the notes of his lectures to a student of him. After having
come back to his Hotel, at 17.00 he left it for an unknown destination.
Confirmed tracks of his successive steps end here.