Catalog of the scientific manuscripts left by Ettore Majorana (with a Recollection of E.Majorana, sixty years after his disappearance)

Abstract

Ettore Majorana, perhaps the greatest Italian theoretical physicist of this century (Enrico Fermi compared him to Galilei and Newton), disappeared misteriously from Naples in 1938, when he was 31. In the first part of this work we outline his scientific personality (on the basis of letters, documents, testimonies collected by us in about twenty years) and the significance of some parts of his publications. In the second part of this paper we set forth some brief information about the unpublished scientific manuscripts left by E.Majorana and known to us till this moment (most of which are deposited at the "Domus Galilaeana" in Pisa, Italy), and present a preliminary Catalogue of them prepared in collaboration with M.Baldo and R.Mignani. [The present material is mainly taken from our book "Il Caso Majorana: Epistolario, Documenti, Testimonianze" (Mondadori, Milan, 1987,1991; Di Renzo, Rome, 2000-2008): We address to such a book (c/o www.direnzo.it, "Arcobaleno" series) all the readers interested in more and deeper information; as well as, for more technical topics, to the subsequent volumes reproducing e.g. part of the scientific manuscripts left unpublished by Ettore Majorana: see, for instance, the e-print arXiv:0709.1183v1[physics.hist-ph].]