Not unusual in those days. A recent study on European laundry habits shows that, until recently, changing clothes was something done only on special occasions, like a purification process. This belief persists to this day among English academics.
Leonardo Sciascia goes as far as to say that Ettore and his uncle “like all ‘good’ Sicilians” were averse to being part of any type of group, to establish teams or partnerships. He adds, “It’s only the worst Sicilians who feel the need for ‘groups,’ for Mafia gangs.”
Note that since each atom must be electrically neutral, Z is also the number of electrons orbiting the nucleus. The proton and electron have the same electric charges, but with reverse signs.
This is still true, even considering that the electron has to spend energy getting out of the atom and the material it is part of, and considering the recoil of the nucleus that fired it. Yes, people were not stupid then, and they did check all the details: We’re talking about a million times more energy disappearing than could be accounted for by such details.
And overlooking a very sleazy park: nature and cost of available services very vocally provided—quite unasked—and this was in the middle of the afternoon.
It seems that Ettore’s uncle Quirino wasn’t being that original in his questioning of Einstein’s relativity. And yet Quirino was instrumental in electing Fermi to Rome, once again showing his intrinsic honesty.
The single voice of dissent came from Cambridge experimentalist Ernest Rutherford, who’d been hinting about the neutron since 1920. No one listened to him.
To put things in perspective, Senator Corbino’s mother was illiterate. Being a very intelligent woman, she taught herself to read and write at the age of fifty, so that she could find out more about the terrible earthquake in Messina, where her son nearly died.
This testimony comes from a 1984 letter from Gilberto Bernardini to Erasmo Recami. Bernardini was part of the Florence group, set up by Fermi’s friend Enrico Persico. The two groups kept a close collaboration.
Sample: The boiling point of oil (figure supplied) is higher than the melting point of the metal used to manufacture a normal pan (figure supplied, too). How do you explain that deep frying doesn’t melt the pan? Answer: When you deep fry, the oil never boils. It’s the water contained inside the food you’re cooking that does. Fascinating.
Fermi met the composer Ottorino Respighi during a transatlantic boat trip and was truly shocked by the old man’s working habits: “by fits, at the oddest hours, often in the middle of the night, or halfway through a meal, whenever the inspiration surged in him, impelling, urging, irrepressible.” Fermi, who kept a strict routine, was horrified.
This explanation of their origin is far from obvious. Robert Millikan, the main cosmic-ray expert in the 1920s, considered these rays to be what Graham Farmelo dubbed a divine benison: “signals [from the] heavens, the birth cries of infant atoms.”
Spin in such a setup is called helicity. For simplicity it may be advisable to assume here that the neutrino moves at the speed of light; this issue is addressed in a later chapter.
John Moffat’s book of memoirs In the Company of Giants contains a number of such delicious stories. I can also heartily recommend the recently published Dirac biography The Strangest Man, by Graham Farmelo. Having spent twenty years berating my British colleagues for the absence of a biography for their twentieth-century scientific exponent, I am happy to say that the wait was worth it. The material in this chapter comes from this source.
The career of an Italian scientist began with a PhD degree (which Ettore obtained in July 1929, at age twenty-two). The aspiring scientist then became an assistant (aiuto) to a professor and eventually, via research and fame, a libero docente, or unpaid lecturer. After a few years of unpaid toil, the libero docente could finally apply for a tenured chair in a concorso, an open competition.
While all other non-Jewish German scientists were washing their hands of the matter (when not opportunistically using the situation to promote their careers), Heisenberg offered to keep Max Born in office, after the ethnic cleansing of May 6 came into force. Born, a Jew and a close friend of Einstein, contemptuously declined the “favor.”
He was for a while the goalkeeper of AB, the Danish champions on numerous occasions. His brother, a mathematician, was a prominent player for AB and made the Danish national and Olympic teams.
Anderson coined the term positron, a contraction of positive and electron; but he also wanted the electron to be renamed negatron for consistency. There were other proposals: The eccentric Herbert Dingle, recalling that Electra’s brother is called Orestes in Greek mythology, suggested that the antielectron be named Oreston.
Rasetti was considered “exotic” by the other Boys (particularly Segrè) because he “read books” and traveled places. His schedules were also more irregular that the others’, with the exception of Ettore. From this early crisis, one can guess that his Boyish attitudes were always a facade. He had a lot in common with Ettore, as we shall see.
Radon emits alpha particles, which, acting on beryllium, produce neutrons. Usually radon is a bad source for alpha particles because it also emits gamma rays, which might mask the effects under study or disturb the instruments; but here it didn’t matter, because Fermi was observing a delayed effect. He’d bombard the beryllium with alpha particles from radon, then remove the radon and use the beryllium as a neutron emitter.
All material and quotes in this chapter are taken from the books by Laura Fermi, Emilio Segrè, Bruno Pontecorvo, and Richard Rhodes referenced at the end.
In some cases, a second beta decay followed, leading to an overall transmutation going up the periodic scale by two protons. When you combine the effect of the two consecutive beta decays element (A, Z) finishes as (A + 1, Z + 2).
Italy had previously lost a war with Ethiopia (in 1896), which thus became the only African nation to successfully resist European colonialism by force. An outrage!
One of the most amazing things about racism is how race itself is merely a self-serving and changeable definition. Southern Europeans never cease to be surprised when they learn that blond northern Europeans consider them “black, certainly not properly white,” (the compliment is returned by declaring the bleached deities “a bunch of Nazi pigs.”) The Chinese are variously considered white or non-white depending on the country. Many mixed Brazilians consider themselves white; whereas in the United States unnoticeable tinges of brown make one eligible for black power membership. The British National Party went the furthest, introducing the concept of nigressence, arguing that the Irish are really black people with white skin. Nazi racism itself grew from a colossal misunderstanding. If we take the expression Aryan literally, the last Aryan arrivals in Europe were the gypsies.
Sample: “My mother was working on her sewing while seated on a stool with her legs slightly apart, when my father opened the door and shouted, ‘Freeze!’ He pointed his rifle at her and shot, the bullet hitting right in the middle of the eyes a huge snake standing upright under the stool in between my mother’s legs.”
Recently a man was caught on the Milan-Lecco train staring twice at a woman, a transgression that was enough for the “victim” to complain that “he was undressing me with the eyes.” The man got ten days in jail and a sixty-euro fine. In a culture that has so long lived with complete strangers staring at each other, one wonders if we shall soon also see Sicilian cannoli made with aspartame.
Ettore has been featured in “Chi l’ha visto” programs repeatedly; most recently on RAI, December 2008, as I’m finishing this manuscript. The original 1938 entry contained an appeal: “Ettore, return. Don’t make us weep. Your family is waiting for you.”
An anonymous letter on file states that Ettore had been kidnapped by interests against the Italian state. It’s hinted that he’d been completing an invention Marconi (recently deceased) had left almost in working order: a “death ray” that could be fired directly from Italy to Ethiopia. Apparently a cow had already been killed in a test strike.
Fermi’s letter is not in his handwriting. Whether it is a forgery or was written with his permission (or even dictated by him) remains a matter for debate.
It’s been claimed that Dorina’s letter never made it to the Duce’s office. Her letter isn’t in the state archives, scrupulously kept during fascism. A Majorana entry can be found, but relates to a certain Maria Majorana—entirely unrelated to Ettore’s family—who complained to the Duce about an estranged husband, only to be told off for being a slut by the official who investigated the matter.
In Italy (as in France, Portugal, and Spain) a proper intellectual has to be impossible to understand by the masses. Anything “popular”—like a thriller—or which might reach a wide audience is scorned and put on the same level as football or bullfights. The real intellectual is several cuts above the populace, well entrenched in the hollow depths of verbal diarrhea.
Naturally if neutrinoless double beta decay is not observed, all we can say is that, given the sensitivity of the experiments, if the neutrino is Majorana, its mass must be smaller than a given figure.
I particularly like her use of the term schermo. It’s a beautiful word, with many senses. It means “a screen” or “a shield” but it’s also used by Dante in Beatrice to signify his feelings of modesty, hiding the sacred terror that Monna Bicce—the nine-year-old who had conquered his heart—inspired in him. Majorana’s “schermo” is also both the root of his attraction and a cover for our unmitigated shame.
All material and quotes in this epilogue regarding the atom bomb are taken from Richard Rhodes’s excellent The Making of the Atom Bomb (see References at the end).
It’s chilling that he accidentally almost gave away the neutron-graphite cross section to the Germans; it was only because they didn’t know this important figure that they persevered with heavy water.
You need enriched uranium to achieve criticality with normal water, because it slows down but also absorbs neutrons. Heavy water, in contrast, only slows down neutrons.
About five tons of heavy water are required to get a nuclear reactor going and ten tons are needed to produce enough plutonium for a bomb. The Germans did purify a couple of tons before being hit by Norwegian saboteurs (their factory was in Norway). But given enough time, they’d eventually have got there.
Denmark, a labor-intensive agricultural country, supplied butter to the German army. In exchange the Germans agreed to leave her alone, as well as her Jews. But by 1943 relations had soured and immediate deportation of all Jews was demanded, with or without butter.
Senator Corbino’s suggestion that they patent slow neutrons may have attracted mirth but ultimately led to a rather protracted legal affair. In 1953 the Boys each received $24,000 from the United States government, as “just compensation” for their patent of slow neutrons. The inhabitants of the Via Panisperna fish pond never received any “just compensation.”
,
, etc). The term was coined by Dirac in 1926.