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

by João Magueijo

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 João 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.

Genres: Science, Biography, Physics, Nonfiction, History

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

João Magueijo is a Portuguese cosmologist and professor in Theoretical Physics at Imperial College London. He is a pioneer of the varying speed of light (VSL) theory.

Reviews

[Paula Fialho Silva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ao ler este livro saí da minha zona de conforto. Gostei imenso da escrita e do humor do autor. Gostei imenso de conhecer um pouco da vida do físico nuclear Ettore Majorana, até porque visitei a Sicília no verão de 2019. Não lhe dou 5⭐ porque tem algumas explicações de Física que, sendo interessantes para quem percebe, foram muito complexas para a minha mente que não é nada de ciências.

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had never heard of Ettore Majorana before, though many of the other names from "modern physics" were familiar to me (Fermi, Bohr, Dirac, etc.). Actually, I'm now looking for more biographies for people involved with the beginnings of this level of physics.

(1) I really liked learning about the physics, but also about the people who came up with the ideas. Much of modern physics includes behavior that doesn't match our expectations of reality... the people who can make that imaginative leap really interest me.

(2) Ettore Majorana is such a unique character. I wish he would have stayed around and continued to work this field. His story is fascinating and sad.

(3) Overall, I did like the way the author tied Majorana's life and character to his work and I really wanted to give this book 5 stars, but some of the ideas he insisted on repeating too often. It wasn't horrible, but I definitely found it annoying. On the other hand, he did keep giving the reader new bits of information while at the same time keeping the reader aware that there was more to the story... a secret not yet revealed. Okay, it was a little heavy-handed at times, but still very effective.

[Miguel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uma história fascinante, a do cientista nuclear italiano Ettore Majorana e do seu misterioso desaparecimento. E pelo meio a física quântica explicada aos totós, como eu. O autor é o cientista português João Magueijo que ganhou ao Einstein ao provar que os neutrinos são mais rápidos do que a velocidade da luz.

[Lu Wang · Rating 5 out of 5]

I rarely speculate on a man's bedroom skills, but I'm willing to bet, upon finishing this book, that Magueijo is brilliant on bed. The reason is difficult to elaborate, but let me start by saying that this man is a brilliant writer; I won't hesitate for a moment to say that he must be a brilliant physicist too.

To say someone is a brilliant physicist is a double positive. More physicists are brilliant than any other walks of life. Magueijo was perhaps as brilliant as the subject of the book - Ettore Majorana; had he been born at the dawn of quantum physics, he would have deserved three Nobel Prizes, much like Majorana himself (who, as a side note, received none, due largely to his reluctance to publish anything he deemed obvious, unworthy, or otherwise unpublishable).

You cannot tell from the book that author's native language is not English. He's articulate, smooth and fucking funny. I didn't use the F word lightly - he used it extensively and profoundly, and to great effect. The F word infused a much-needed personal touch to Majorana's life. It turned Majorana to Ettore.

Also impressive is the way he presented complex subjects such as the Feynman diagram - it can almost convince lay people that they understood them.

Of course, they don't. Majorana's brilliance cannot be fully appreciated by lay people. They can only be dazzled by it.

In that sense Magueijo pulled of the impossible. Another impossible feat was that he managed to presented such a tragic soul in such a humorous light. In all likelihood Majorana fed the shark somewhere near Palermo, Italy, leaving behind an incredibly important body of work that can only be partially recovered and appreciated postumously - much like netrinos themselves.

[Miguel · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is indeed strange that Majorana is not a more well-known name to physicists. I guess the Majorana neutrino being the main exception. However, Majorana’s disappearance from the physics zeitgeist mirrors so much of his life.

I like how Magueijo is able to paint a clear picture of a figure so full of contradictions when looked at on the surface. It is another one of those cases where the kind of physicist the man is reflects so much of his own personal struggles and fancies.

Fermi is described as a quantum engineer almost, as he was not concerned with the more philosophical interpretations of the field in which he was working. Ettore on the other hand was someone who would feel perhaps more at home talking about Schopenhauer than about physics. To him, physics was a personal quest.

It’s noteworthy that it seems the ways of the heart and the lack of love led him down to his disappearance and retreat from public life.

The scientific explanations of things in this book were also simple and made cohesive sense within the narrative. Slow neutrons, while lower in energy, are better for fission since they spend more time within nuclei. Neutrino oscillations work because of the uncertainty principle applying to mass and neutrino flavor. The neutrino being Majorana (its own antiparticle) would allow for neutrinoless double beta decay, as the neutrinos can “annihilate themselves.” Whereas if neutrinos were Dirac, you would need a distinct antiparticle to annihilate the neutrino. Experiments can only set bounds on this phenomenon via the energy carried by the electrons.

[John Gribbin · Rating 3 out of 5]

An informative but irritating book. The scientific stuff is fascinating, but the author's self-consciously "matey" style grates when it come to the biography. He also commits a couple of classic sins. "I don't want to start a conspiracy theory", he writes, while starting a a conspiracy theory, and "I make no apologies for the detour", which is, of course, a way of apologising for the detour! There are also a couple of scientific oddities. Notably, but perhaps because the passage is badly constructed, Magueijo gives the impression he does not understand the point Schrödinger was making with his famous thought experiment about a cat. It was meant to show that the idea of "collapse of the wave function" is absurd, which it is, not to suggest that it is real. And as a science fiction fan, I was annoyed by his suggestion that Martin Amis came up with the idea of a time-reversed world, which was dealt with much better (and much earlier) by Philip K. Dick, in Counter-Clock World. But the stuff about "the Majorana neutrino", a particle which goes forwards and backwards in time simultaneously, is really good. My advice is to read this bit carefully, skim the rest, and follow up by checking out the books which Magueijo cites as the source for his biographical and historical material.

[Timothy Rooney · Rating 2 out of 5]

The subject matter of the book had exciting potential. Unfortunately, the presentation of material was dull and not compelling.

The story chronologically relates the life of Ettore Majorana. I suspect little first-hand information is available since Ettore seems like such a reclusive introvert. It was reassuring to learn of the strong (overbearing?) family structure in Ettore's life. Additionally, information about Ettore seems to come from those interacting with Ettore and from Ettore's family. This is frustrating because the reader doesn't really "meet" Ettore and only learns how others interacted with Ettore.

Next, the author relates some of the phenomenal and ground-breaking theories proposed by Ettore; several of those theories were later proved true. Although this seems to demonstrate his brilliance, I feel details are missing. It reminds me of the story often related in math books about Ramanujan and Hardy and the taxi number taken by Hardy, 1729. Hardy can't quickly figure out anything interesting about 1729, and Ramanujan immediately responds that 1729 "is the SMALLEST number that can be written as the sum of two cubes in two different ways." Well, this SEEMS to show Ramanujan's brilliance beyond one of the greatest mathematical geniuses--Hardy. In truth, Ramanujan had been working on this problem already so coincidence had that number conveniently appear and make Ramanujan look brilliant. I wonder how much work Ettore had done on material referenced in the book so what appears to be unimaginable genius actually resulted from countless hours to days to weeks of work/contemplation the reader does not know about. (I'm sure Ettore was smart, but it doesn't seem reassuring that this was based on any effort of Ettore. I expect Ettore did a lot of work and study not described to the reader, but it APPEARS Ettore was just brilliant.)

Next, the book references a traumatic event later in Ettore's life multiple times early in the book. By the time this event is fully detailed, I had lost interest in the event and quit caring about what had happened.

Next, one should examine the life of Ettore in regard to the Autism Spectrum. And one MIGHT argue that such examination is beyond the scope of this book. Really, though, maybe that would describe and account for the behavior and obsessions of Ettore?

Next, other mathematicians and physicists working with Ettore are described. Admittedly I do not have much knowledge of these other mathematicians/physicists, but Magueijo seems to disparage and belittle these revered and venerated personalities in comparison to Ettore.

Finally, the book wraps up with a "what could have happened to Ettore" portion. This speculative section reminded me of fantasizing about winning the lottery. Sure, it's fun to imagine for 5, maybe 10 minutes. Then you move on because the fantasy has run its course. Here, the many possible outcomes for Ettore are explored, but little evidence is provided. I feel like I was pulled along for this fantasy about what might have happened but then forced to endure one scenario after another with no enthusiasm.

I would have a very hard time recommending this book to anyone. Keep it on the VERY BOTTOM of your stack of books to read.

[Sebastian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have studied physics, both seriously and as a hobby, on and off, for something like a quarter of a century, yet I have never heard of Ettore Majorana. Part of the explanation likely lies in the fact that despite him being an extremely intelligent fellow and a whiz-kid at physics, he decided to opt out of the race to publish and so very few phenomena bear his name. But I’ve also studied the history of the field a bit, again, on and off, yet I have never heard of him in more than, possibly, as a passing – and thus forgettable – mention. Yet he is such an intriguing figure, and apparently a bit of a national science hero in Sicily and Italy in general. Though now that I mention Italy – I guess most of the scientist I know about are either from the US-UK axis, or the Teutonic-Norse axis, with a sprinkling of Slavic and Far East thrown in for good measure. I mean, I knew about Fermi, of course, and clearly the fellow was Italian, but I always kind of saw him as an American Italian, a sort of “youse guys” fellow, not the full-blown eccola-signora-spaghetti-carbonara-molto-bene sort of Italian that he, I guess, was.

Now, where was I going with this review? Through personal rambling towards an inconclusive finish, much like the book – you learn a great deal about the life and times of the intriguing Ettore Majorana, quite a bit about the (arguably) more famous fellows around him, like Enrico Fermi, quite a bit about what doing physics is like in (fascist) Italy, and quite a bit about some of the nutty theories that surround Majorana’s mysterious disappearance, but there are no definitive answers, not even about the neutrino that bears our hero’s name. Though at least on that last bit, solid science is currently under way.

[Carl · Rating 5 out of 5]

A strange, strange book about a strange, strange man: Ettore Majorana, a gifted Italian theoretical physicist who worked in the 1930’s with Enrico Fermi, who considered him to be one of the best scientists of the ages. Majorana was super-brilliant, but badly disturbed. He reminds me of Kurt Gödel, one of the best mathematicians of the 20th century, who starved himself to death. Majorana could have won a Nobel Prize, but disappeared without a trace in 1938.

The book contains a crazy collection of topics: a biography of Majorana and sketches of his family, and for background: a primer on nuclear physics, a little history of Italy and Mussolini in the 30’s, a travelogue on Sicily and Italy, a baby burnt in its crib, and a description of the Sicilian justice system in the 30’s. This book must be the only one in the world that contains both Feynman diagrams (particle physics) and the iconic photograph of Mussolini’s corpse hanging upside down. Plus comments on Italian wines and a light dusting of the F-word.

Majorana started out badly. As a child, Ettore’s mother proudly had him compute cube roots in his head. Sir Richard Burton, the Victorian linguist/explorer, said that he “narrowly escaped being that most wretched of creatures, the child prodigy.” Sir Richard may have had the right idea about child prodigies.

Majorana joined Enrico Fermi’s team of scientists in Rome who were doing revolutionary work in nuclear physics in the 30’s, including some of the first studies of uranium fission. Majorana’s work during this time was considered outstanding and prescient. The consequences of his ideas are still being investigated.

Majorana had an unusual trait for a scientist – he never needed recognition for his work. He drove Fermi crazy because he didn’t publish many of his results. Majorana was even glad if someone reported a discovery that Majorana had made some time before, because it saved him the trouble of writing a paper about it.

Sadly, Majorana became ill, depressed and isolated. For four years he stayed inside his bedroom at home. This was partly because his uncle Dante had had been jailed, charged with causing a baby to be burnt in his cradle! Proving the uncle’s innocence had taken the family years and many bribes.
After a while Majorana got out of his bedroom and accepted a professorship at the University of Naples. He never went to work, however. He left a couple of cryptic messages, and then disappeared without a trace, but after withdrawing his savings from the bank.

Afterwards, attempts to explain his disappearance almost became a cottage industry. He may have drowned himself or fell off a boat between Palermo and Naples; he may have joined a monastery; he may have been abducted by the Mafia; etc., etc. There were reports of a tramp who could do cube roots in his head.

The author of this book about Majorana is a modern-day particle physicist who studied at the Ettore Majorana Center in Sicily. He became interested in Majorana, and decided to conduct his own investigation into Ettore’s disappearance, undaunted by how cold the trail was by then. The author tracked down as many surviving relatives and friends of Majorana as he could, and interviewed them, composing an enjoyable travelogue for us.

(I suspect that the author just wanted an excuse to sample various Italian wines.)

[João · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a semi-biographical book oscillating between episodes in the life of Ettore Majorana and some insights into his research, presented in a very accessible manner. I enjoyed it quite a bit, and it does provide the reader with a nice overview of a lot of theories regarding Ettore's life (and mysterious disappearance). However, it becomes fairly obvious that many chapters are more about the author's journey in finding out about Ettore, and his opinions on tangentially related subjects, than on Ettore himself (really, who cares a woman tried to get the author to "chat her up" on a boat?).

One thing I really did not like about the book were the constant forward-references to episodes explained much later. I feared I had read all about the "burnt baby" story, constantly mentioned throughout the book - and completely forgotten about it. As it turns out, it is only described more than half-way through the book. Back-references are OK; forward references not so much, especially in this number.

In summary, the book is an interesting and well-written summary of the life of a troubled genius, with the insights gained from the author being a physicist himself. It's not a serious book, and the irreverence sometimes feels forced, but this makes it quite readable in the end.

[Brendan]

Only read half

[Jonathan Hockey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book started out very good, with descriptions of the troubled genius and tortured soul figure of Ettore Majoran, including a quote such as the following describing him:

"He was brought up by social outcasts and grew monstrously distorted, lacking social skills and independence, full of ineptitude. People like him..[are] "Frankensteins," artificially gifted, clever "against nature". And like the literary monster, behind the bestial genius lies a very different nature: tender in a way that can never be fully realized; longing for love, knowing full well that it will always be denied; a furnace of kind emotions that the ogre exterior will always screen." (pp 41)

This kind of quality seemed to doom Ettore to his eventual demise/disappearance.

The book never establishes a theory as to what did indeed happen to Ettorre after he went missing. Maybe suicide, maybe a planned disappearance to escape the nightmare of WW2 that was engulfing all around him, maybe a retreat to a monastery. It does seem most likely to me that it was a suicide, but the body was never found and enough enigma surrounds him and people who knew him that it seems to remain open.

It also talks about his scientific theories and predictions regarding neutrinos. The problem is that the book fizzles out towards the end with no clear plan of how to close it up and instead seems to just engage with a set of arbitrary anecdotes with no logical direction or guiding rationale.

[Raquel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Um livro extraordinário. Uma escrita admirável, original e bem-humorada. A vida de um génio esquecido. Espetacular, uma das melhores biografias já escritas.

[Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great story. Fab history of a bygone era.
An unimaginable, but fatally flawed genius, its main character.
A clever and contemporary author.
Better than any fiction!

[Kiira · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW.








this turned out to be so much more than what I expected.

[LauraT · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit too complicated for a "simple mind" as myself: all parts with physics description, even if I imagine easy enough, were Greek to me - and rather boring I'm afraid. Majorana story on the other hand has always fascinated me...

[Shanshe Kenkadze · Rating 5 out of 5]

საინტერესო ადამიანი გავიცანი

[Solleone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Qualora necessitasse di presentazione, lascio il compito a chi lo conobbe contemporaneamente come docente e discente, ovvero Majorana visto da Fermi:
"al mondo ci sono varie categorie di scienziati; gente di secondo e terzo rango, che fan del loro meglio ma non vanno molto lontano.
C'�� anche gente di primo rango, che arriva a scoperte di grande importanza, fondamentali per lo siluppo della scienza [tra questi si poneva modestamente lo stesso Fermi].
Ma poi ci sono i geni, come Galileo e Newton. Ebbene, Ettore era uno di quelli. Majorana aveva quel che nessun altro al mondo ha. Sfortunatamente gli mancava quel che �� invece comune trovare negli altri uomini: il semplice buon senso".

Il primo incontro personale fu ai tempi del liceo con i "Ragazzi di via Panisperna" di Amelio, segu��to da Sciascia e poi sullo sfondo di un paio di biografie di Fermi.

L'autore tenta un ritratto a tutto tondo, se pur con una visione di parte. Condivisibile anche la proposta di un Nobel postumo.
Il testo appare documentato storicamente, le parti scientifiche risultano innocue, lo stile scorrevole e accattivante.

Unico neo, considerato il tenore dell'argomento, avrei evitato alcuni scivoloni ed eccessi linguistici (non so se riconducibili all'autore o all'estro di traduttore/editore) che non modernizzano il testo ma lo degradano.
Un blando esempio su tutti, dubito che Ettore evrebbe definito il pur vetusto Bohr letteralmente un " vecchio trombone rincoglionito".

[Jason Underdown · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book tells the story of two related mysteries. The first is the mysterious disappearance of one of the 20th century's most brilliant physicists, Ettore Majorana. The second is the mystery of neutrinos, and how they came to be known, first through Pauli, and subsequently through Dirac, Davis, Majorana and Pontecorvo.

The author, Joao Magueijo, a top-notch physicist deftly weaves the life story of Ettore together with the experiments and theoretical leaps that were made by Ettore and his contemporaries. Ettore was closely connected to some well known physicists such as Enrico Fermi and Emilio Segre to name a few, but he had a falling out with them and this led to a reclusive, perhaps dark time in his life. The author tells both stories in colorful language, and is very entertaining.

You do have to get to the end to get to the juicy neutrino physics, but this is true of nearly all popular physics books. I have read many popular physics books, and this is one of my favorites. I highly recommend it!

[Max Renn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A true story missing person mystery set in a brothel where all the whores are quantum theories and all greatest minds in physics, knife-wielding pimps intent on cutting each other up on the dance floor.

our narrator is a young physicist himself, dishing on all this with the verve of a bitchy drag queen/private detective that knows all the concerned parties and where the skeletons are buried.

at the center of this story is the disappearance of the genius physicist Ettore Majorana, perhaps the brightest of them all, and as we follow the cold case and wild conspiracies alike, we find ourselves getting an accidental and refreshingly painless rundown of the core concepts of quantum physics.

So if you like your science mixed with a bit of tabloid, you could do much worse than this.

[Michele Maglio · Rating 4 out of 5]

L'autore riesce con maestria a unire in un unico romanzo tre generi come la biografia, il giallo e la saggistica. Nonostante Maguejo intervenga spesso in maniera eccentrica e talvolta inopportuna, egli ha il pregio di riuscire a spiegare complicati concetti fisici rendendoli facilmente comprensibili a tutti. Inoltre lo stesso autore cita in maniera distaccata le diverse correnti di pensiero riguardanti la scomparsa di Majorana, per poi analizzarle secondo il proprio punto di vista. Il libro si legge facilmente, e la fluidità del linguaggio, nonché la commistione di diversi generi letterari, fanno si che l'opera del portoghese possa essere letta senza problemi da tutti. Lo consiglio vivamente.

[Paulomonic · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author being one of the VSL bad-boys of contemporary physics, the book's irreverence was to be expected. Even though at times slightly over the edge, it contributes to a very pleasant reading.

If you love science, you'll like the book; if you love history of science, you'll love the book; if you are a physicist, you'll probably want to bash the author, for being so adamant and judgemental over characters and events of which your have your own well established personnal views.

In all cases, you must read this book. Very well written, and fairly well designed. Some "wait for it", "keep reading", techniques are slightly exagerated, but do not hamper the shine ot the overall effect.

An enjoyable, instructive, must read book for science oriented people.

[Sheila · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read; however, most of the information about Ettore Majorana was gossip and conjecture. Throwing out hypothesis about what happened to Ettore in 1938 is conjecture and moot. He disappeared and we'll never know why. And is it important anyway? Character sketches about his comtempory scientists were interesting. The book also had a lot of science which was reasonable written for a layman like me.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars unequivocally. The author is João Magueijo and he cracks me up with his irreverent writing style. He explains the physics quite well and sometimes even poetically. My favourite example: "The faster something moves, the slower time flows. It grinds to a halt for particles moving at the speed of light, so that massless particles like the photon live outside time." Cool.

[Michele Torbidoni · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ha il pregio di riuscire a spiegare alcuni dei punti più complessi delle teorie sviluppate da Majorana, ma Magueijo è troppo protagonista e compiaciuto. Sembra quasi faccia parte della vicenda personale del fisico siciliano.

[Dana Woodaman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The BEST science book I have ever read - funny, engaging, full of stories of some of the great atomic scientists, and a great, unsolved mystery to boot.

[Marilia Peres · Rating 4 out of 5]

Um excelente livro. Escrito com muito sentido de humor. Aprendi bastante sobre Física Quântica.

[Francisco Moura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great biography

[Donavan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Entertaining. Engaging. Enthusiastic. Extraordinary? Ettore.