The disappearance of Majorana

I've just finished reading two books on the curious disappearance of Italian physicist Ettore Majorana.  One by Leonardo Sciascia, and the other by João Magueijo titled A Brilliant Darkness.  I'd recommend both.  Sciascia's treatment, which appears as a kind of appendix in the NYRB edition of The Moro Affair (translated by Peter Robb), is more literary perhaps and more focused on Ettore Majorana the man rather than the details of his scientific interests.  Magueijo's book is lighter and is funny, suspenseful, and informative (lots of neutrino physics).  There's a review by Michael Brooks posted on the New Scientist blog CultureLab if you want the skinny on Magueijo's book.

My interest in Ettore Majorana began a few years ago after reading a paper about Majorana fermions in topological insulators.  That was probably back in 2009, right about the time A Brilliant Darkness was published.  Since then Majorana fermions have been all over the condensed matter literature.  Not a day goes by when I don't see a paper invoking Majorana states or modes.  Naturally, I was curious about who the man behind these curious fermions might be.  Until I found Sciascia's small book, I had to rely on number of incomplete articles about the physicist which are easily conjured up from the web with a simple search.  What I didn't appreciate until reading Magueijo's book was just what an industry Majorana conspiracy theory is.  There are films, documentaries, comic books, novels, and crankish web sites all devoted to solving the mystery of Majorana's unexplained disappearance.  Magueijo remains objectively circumspect about what became of Majorana.

On the off chance that João Magueijo reads this post, I have a question for him: "What did Gilda Senatore say when you asked her why she never opened the box that Majorana gave her the day he disappeared?  Or, perhaps more important, how did she react to the question?  Guilty, puzzled, regretful?"

The real reason that I took the leap and read both Sciascia's and Magueijo's book is that I chanced on a reference to the missing Italian physicist in the novel Docteur Pasavento by Enrique Vila-Matas.  An example of literature feeding back into my scientific life.