A Brilliant Darkness The Extraordinary Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Ettore Majorana, the Troubled Genius of the Nuclear Age

On the night of March 26, 1938, nuclear physicist Ettore Majorana boarded a ship, cash and passport in hand. He was never seen again. InA Brilliant Darkness, theoretical physicist Joao Magueijo tells the story of Majorana and his research group, "the Via Panisperna Boys," who discovered atomic fission in 1934. As Majorana, the most brilliant of the group, began to realize the implications of what they had found, he became increasingly unstable. Did he commit suicide that night in Palermo? Was he kidnapped? Did he stage his own death?A Brilliant Darknesschronicles Majorana's invaluable contributions to scienceincluding his major discovery, the Majorana neutrinowhile revealing the truth behind his fascinating and tragic life.

João Magueijo is a lecturer in Theoretical Physics at Imperial College, London, where he was for three years a Royal Society Research Fellow. He has been a visiting researcher at the University of California at Berkeley and Princeton University, and received his doctorate in Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University. Magueijo was featured in a British television documentary, "Einstein's Biggest Blunder," which was broadcast last year. Visit the author's website at http://theory.ic.uk/~magueijo/.