The Tenth Article of Ettore Majorana

Abstract

This year is the centenary of the birth of Ettore Majorana, one of the major Italian physicists of all times. In this note we briefly sketch a few biographical details about Ettore Majorana and introduce and discuss the main points of Majorana's 10th article. In his article Majorana explicitly considers quantum mechanics as an irreducible statistical theory because the theory is not able to describe the time evolution of a single particle or atom in a precise environment at a deterministic level. This lack of determinism at the level of an elementary physical system motivated him to suggest a formal analogy between statistical laws observed in physics and in the social sciences. We hope the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Ettore Majorana will be useful to remember and to reconsider not only his exceptional achievements in theoretical physics but also his fresh and original views on the role of statistical laws in physics and in other disciplines such as the social sciences.