A Brilliant Darkness: The Extraordinary Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Ettore Majorana, the Troubled Genius of the N

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Basic Books, Nov 24, 2009 - Science - 320 pages
On the night of March 26, 1938, nuclear physicist Ettore Majorana boarded a ship, cash and passport in hand. He was never seen again. In A Brilliant Darkness, theoretical physicist Joao Magueijo tells the story of Majorana and his research group, "the Via Panisperna Boys," who discovered atomic fission in 1934. As Majorana, the most brilliant of the group, began to realize the implications of what they had found, he became increasingly unstable. Did he commit suicide that night in Palermo? Was he kidnapped? Did he stage his own death?

A Brilliant Darkness chronicles Majorana's invaluable contributions to science -- including his major discovery, the Majorana neutrino -- while revealing the truth behind his fascinating and tragic life.
 

Contents

The Attic of 251 Via Etnea
3
Nuclear Crisis
18
Frankensteins Youth
30
Meet Ettore Majorana
75
Neutrinos from Transylvania
92
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
135
Artichokes
148
The Crepuscule of Via Panisperna
164
The Quiet Before the Storm
182
Pagliacci
205
They Thought the Sun Was Sick
223
Ettore MajoranaTM
242
Acknowledgments
267
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About the author (2009)

Joao Magueijo has taught at Cambridge University, Princeton University, and the University of California, Berkeley. He currently holds a Chair in Theoretical Physics at Imperial College, London. Author of Faster Than the Speed of Light, he lives in London.

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