Ettore Majorana: Unpublished research notes on theoretical physics (Q947701)

Ettore Majorana was born in Catania, Sicily in 1906. As physicist he became a member of Enrico Fermi's group in Rome in the 1930s before he disappeared suddenly in March 1938 under mysterious circumstances. Today, Majorana is well known for his work on nuclear forces, neutrinos (more generally Majorana fermions) and particles with arbitrary spin. The year 2006 marked Majorana's centenary of his birth. Scientific papers on this occasion were published by Springer in 2006. With some delay the editors of the present book also make accessible Majorana's \textit{Quaderni}, i.e.\ his notebooks. Nowadays, interested researchers may find it difficult to appreciate Majorana's brightness when consulting only his few (nine) published papers with only three of them being translated into English. In addition, most of his research notes remained unpublished for many decades. It is hoped that with the help of his eighteen \textit{Quaderni} together with the previously published and translated five \textit{Volumetti} (booklets) his ingeniousness both as a mathematician and theoretical physicist will become apparent, even though many important manuscripts have probably been lost. The topics covered in the \textit{Quaderni} range from classical physics to quantum field theory. The largest part, however, is devoted to atomic physics since it was the main topic of his time and also of Fermi's group in Rome. In particular, the atomic hyperfine structure was investigated in great detail. The editors inserted a minimal number of words to facilitate the reading of the calculations. I find this book extremely useful, because it signifies the importance of mathematics as a unifying tool for science as a whole. Even research physicists working in elementary particle physics will find this book of value in their pursuits.