Last tracks from a genius
On Friday 25 March 1938 Majorana went to the
Institute of Physics and handed over the lecture notes
and some other papers to one of his students. After
that, Ettore returned to his hotel and, after writing
farewell letters to his family and to Carrelli, embarked
on a ship to Palermo. He reached his destination the
following morning, where he lodged for a short time in
the Grand Hotel Sole. It was here that he wrote the
telegram and the letter to Carrelli pointing out a
change of mind about his disappearance. On Saturday
evening Majorana embarked on a ship from Palermo
to Naples. From here onwards, no other reliable information
about him is available.
There have been several conjectures about the fate
of Majorana, including suicide, a retreat in a monastery
and a flight to a foreign country. The search for a
reason for such a dramatic decision ranges from the
personal and familiar, such as Ettore’s peculiar relationship
with his extremely possessive mother (especially
after the death of his father), to nice literary tales,
such as that related by Leonardo Sciascia in one of his
famous novels on Majorana’s possible foresight of the
tragedy of the atomic bomb. However, to quote Ettore
himself on his approach to doing physics: “We cannot
give to such hypothesis greater likelihood than to some
other theoretical presumptions without a too much
subjective appraisal.”