Enrico Fermi e Ettore Majorana: continuita' e rinnovamento nell'insegnamento della Fisica teorica

Abstract

In 1927, just after he obtained a full professorship, Enrico Fermi delivered his first course on Theoretical Physics at the Institute of Physics in Rome. The following year Edoardo Amaldi, Emilio Segre' and Ettore Majorana became students of that course. The lectures given in 1927-28, whose content may be easily reconstructed, probably had a deep impact in forming such young students, who participated actively in the Physics researches carried on in Rome soon after. In this perspective, the case of Ettore Majorana is certainly the most important one: as a lecturer, in 1933-36 he planned to give three advanced Physics courses in Rome, before obtaining his full professorship in Theoretical Physics "for high and well-deserved repute" in 1937. From the analysis of the lectures he delivered in Naples in 1938, we can conclude that, in part, Majorana referred to the Fermi lectures he followed as a student, but he also introduced some advanced (for that time) topics, rendering his course a very modern one. Much of these frontier topics were already cited in the programmes of the mentioned three courses he presented few years earlier.