Neutrino Man : The Vanishing of Ettore Majorana

Eighty years of speculation have not solved the disappearance of the Italian physicist Ettore Majorana in 1938. Many theories, some insanely wild, have been advanced concerning the disappearance of Majorana, who has become far more famous in death than in life. Most theories revolve around Majorana's putative disgust with the development of the atomic bomb (something no other physicists had even dreamed of at the date of Majorana's disappearance), leading to his seeking refuge in a monastery or, more drastically, committing suicide. Other theories involve sci-fi hypotheses revolving around Majorana's prediction of self-annihilation of elementary particles. All of the theories have missed the mark. Ettore Majorana was physically and mentally ill because of his long-standing gastric ulcer and his attempts to cure himself. Mainstream physicists and journalists have never seriously entertained Majorana succumbing to health-related issues, preferring to dwell on the more politically charged scenarios involving philosophical objections to the atomic bomb. In his book Neutrino Man, the Vanishing of Ettore Majorana, Ralph Giorno, MD, sets the record straight. Majorana's health problems were rooted in a gastric ulcer, a disease which for decades was felt to be caused by "stress," and was one of the last bastions of the miasma theory of the causes of illness. Ulcers were finally proven to be caused by bacteria, microorganisms that were the focus of the epic battle to prove that germs cause disease. Dr. Giorno's book includes the most extensive translation of the heated debate between Louis Pasteur and the 'miasma' doctors that took place at the French Academy of Medicine in 1879. Unfortunately for Majorana, the germ theory as applied to ulcers did not triumph until a half-century after his death.