HISTORICAL PRELUDE Ettore Majorana's fame solidly rests on testimonies like the following, from the evocative pen of Giuseppe Cocconi. At the request of Edoardo Amaldi, he wrote from CERN (July 18, 1965): "In January 1938, after having just graduated, I was invited, essen tially by you, to come to the Institute of Physics at the University in Rome for six months as a teaching assistant, and once I was there I would have the good fortune of joining Fermi, Bernardini (who had been given a chair at Camerino a few months earlier) and Ageno (he, too, a new graduate), in the research of the...

Without listing his works, all of which are highly notable both for the originality of the methods utilized as well as for the importance of the results achieved, we limit ourselves to the following: Inmodernnucleartheories, thecontributionmadebythisresearcher to the introduction of the forces called 'Majorana forces' is universally recognized as the one, among the most fundamental, that permits us to theoretically comprehend the reasons for nuclear stability. The work of Majorana today serves as a basis for the most important research in this ?eld. In atomic physics, the merit of having...

Through just a handful of papers, Ettore Majorana left an indelible mark in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science and even economics before his mysterious disappearance in 1938. It is only now that the importance of Majorana's work is being realised: Majorana fermions are intensely studied today, and his work on neutrino physics has provided possible explanations for the existence of dark matter. In this unique volume, Salvatore Esposito explores not only Majorana's known papers but, even more interestingly, unveils his unpublished works as well. These include powerful methods...