Rome starts Majorana celebrations
Celebrations to mark the centenary of the outstanding Sicilian physicist Ettore Majorana began on 28 February with the opening ceremony in the beautiful Pietro da Cortona Hall on Capitol Hill in Rome. A lecture by Antonino Zichichi on "La genialità di Ettore Majorana vista da Enrico Fermi", commemorating the great scientist, formed the central part of an event organized by the Comitato Panisperna, which is promoting the Ettore Majorana centenary celebrations taking place during 2006.
The cultural association Comitato Panisperna helped to set up the Enrico Fermi Centre in Italy and recover the building of the Physics Institute on Via Panisperna in Rome, where Fermi and his group achieved their important scientific results. Senator Athos De Luca, chair of Comitato Panisperna, made the proposal to recover the building and transform it into a museum, which was approved in 1999. Comitato Panisperna also aims to stimulate activities that lead to more understanding about the personal roles of Fermi and his collaborators, as well as promoting scientific culture in general. The event to open the Ettore Majorana centenary celebration acted as a starting point for deepening the understanding of the role of Majorana's rather entangled personality.
Athos De Luca chaired the opening ceremony and, after welcoming the audience and describing the achievements and activities of Comitato Panisperna, introduced others present. These included the Nobel laureate Samuel Ting, Renato Guarini, Rector of the University of Rome La Sapienza, and Giovanni Bornia, the Assessore alla Cultura of the City of Rome, and Zichichi, who is president of the Enrico Fermi Centre. Bruno Maraviglia, a member of Comitato Panisperna, followed this introduction. He stressed that the Enrico Fermi Centre has not only generated more historical interest in Fermi's period but has also produced new, innovative and interdisciplinary research directions, one of which, in particular, concerns brain-function studies by magnetic resonance based on very advanced instrumentation.
In his lecture, Zichichi emphasized how from the early 1960s he made efforts to convince scientists and others of the greatness of Majorana's scientific thought and activities. He recalled that the Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture (EMFCSC) was founded at CERN in 1963 - with an instituting act signed by J S Bell, P M S Blackett, I I Rabi, V F Weisskopf and Zichichi - and named after the outstanding Sicilian physicist who was almost unknown at the time. The EMFCSC, located in the ancient and enchanting city of Erice in Sicily, was intended both to expand the impact of science to the maximum level and to establish a permanent reminder of Majorana's role. Zichichi also noted Fermi's opinion of Majorana: "There are various categories of scientists in the world of second and third rank, who do their best without going far. There are also scientists of first rank, who make discoveries of great importance, fundamental for the development of science; but then there are the geniuses like Galilei and Newton. Well, Ettore was one of these."
Many other interesting points were stressed during the event. Ting, at the end of Zichichi's lecture, commented on the great contributions of Italian physicists to science and noted the discovery of the antideuteron and the first search for the heavy lepton, both performed at CERN by Zichichi and his collaborators, at a time when CERN was starting to compete with the major laboratories of the US.
This first successful event of the Majorana Centenary Celebrations attracted a large audience, in particular members of the Majorana family. It was followed by the presentation to the public of the new clay bust of Ettore Majorana made by the young sculptor Giuseppe Ducrot. A bronze cast will be made of the bust, to be located at the Enrico Fermi Centre.