Science Focus: Italy closes case on physician's mysterious disappearance
Prosecutor rules that physicist who vanished in 1938 was spotted in Venezuela two decades later
On February 4, Rome prosecutor Pierfilippo Laviani ruled that Majorana was still alive between 1955 and 1959 and was living in Valencia, Venezuela, under the assumed surname of Bini. Laviani declared the case closed, having found no criminal evidence in his disappearance.
Ettore Majorana was one of the greatest but least known 20th century physicists. Today his work is often cited alongside that of his friend, Enrico Fermi, who won the Nobel Prize for physics.
Fermi, one of the creators of modern physics and the atom bomb, said of his friend: "There are several categories of scientists in the world; those of second or third rank do their best but never get very far.
"Then there is the first rank: those who make important discoveries, fundamental to scientific progress. But then there are the geniuses, like Galilei and Newton. Majorana did belong to the last category."
No one really knew what happened to Majorana in 1938 after he turned reclusive and then disappeared. Theories ranged from suicide to defection to the Soviet Union.
