Sulla death of the physicist Ettore Majoranain March 1938, the most varied and imaginative hypotheses were made. Suicide? Retreat to a convent? Escape to South America to live a second life with a new identity?
Poised between two universes, that of the mathematician and that of the physicist, the scholar from Catania belonged to the group of young scientists headed by Enrico Fermi (on 10 December 1938, Fermi received the Nobel Prize for Physics for «the identification of new elements of radioactivity and the discovery of nuclear reactions using slow neutrons») and that in Rome, in the institute in via Panisperna, he aimed at exploration of the atomic nucleus. Meanwhile, one of the darkest periods in world history was advancing: Hitler’s Germany had just invaded Austria, and shortly thereafter the racial laws and persecution against the Jews would be promulgated.
The library of missing physicists by Barbara Bellomo, author of detective stories and historical novels, traces the cold case of Majorana’s mysterious disappearance with a novel that runs on two different temporal planes that continually intertwine. A story that mixes real characters with fictional ones like Ida, a woman looking for redemption, who decides to follow in the footsteps of her friend Ettore Majorana and her never forgotten youthful love. A woman with a painful secret.
Barbara Bellomo has a PhD in Ancient History. Among his books we remember “The thief of memories”, “The house of the carob”, “The book of seven seals”, published with Salani. (Photo: Annamaria Mangiacasale)
The mystery of Ettore Majorana told by a woman
A novel about the kids of via Panisperna whose protagonist is a woman. How come?
I thought of Ida to talk about the world of science from a different, more intimate and personal perspective, and also because the one in via Panisperna was an almost exclusively male environment. This is an important aspect of the novel which also wants to highlight the difficult condition of women in the 1930s.
Who is Ida Clementi?
Ida is the librarian on via Panisperna. It is she who takes us by the hand into the institute and reveals the discoveries that have changed atomic studies forever. Telling the world through the eyes of someone who is not a physicist has made it possible to make complex topics understandable even to those who are not experts. But above all Ida is a figure forced to deal with a world that considers women either daughters or wives or mothers. With almost no possibility of other social recognition.
There are many hypotheses about the disappearance of Ettore Majorana. How much trouble did this character in the book give you?
Writing about Ettore Majorana was beautiful and rewarding. I was able to show a man intent on his studies, with chalk and pen in hand, busy reading or writing formulas. I admit that it wasn’t easy at all. The character continually eluded me. This is why I chose to tell the story through Ida, a protagonist of pure imagination, free to move through History with a capital H, without changing it, but crossing it.
The Library of Missing Physicists by Barbara Bellomo, Garzanti244 pages, €16.90
It’s about a group of brilliant young scientists. Sensing that their discoveries would end up changing the world in ways they couldn’t imagine, would they pursue other paths?
Difficult to answer. I believe that when you study something with such passion you are so eager to find the solution and that sometimes you understand too late where you are going. And when you understand this, not everyone is able to stop.
Is there an aspect of the story of the boys from via Panisperna that you found particularly compelling?
I was struck by their youth, but also what the relationships between them were. Some very close, like Fermi and Rasetti, others like Majorana left a little aside. You can hardly put too many geniuses under the same roof without some form of competition arising.
The Majorana case gave rise to a reflection, still current, on the limits and non-neutrality of science and on relations with power.
The disappearance of Ettore Majorana remains a mystery, but his story continues to represent a warning about the need to balance progress and moral responsibility, especially in a society like today’s where new technologies can radically transform the world.
Has writing this novel changed the way you see the present?
It changed me. Very. Now I look at our world with new eyes. Having experienced many silent battles together with my protagonist Ida, just because she was a woman, or meeting a brilliant scientist like Lise Meitner, forced in those years to enter the faculty through the back door – also because she was a woman – gave me the sense of how far we did. This obviously doesn’t mean there isn’t still a long way to go.
iO Donna © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED