Francesco Severi (born in 1879 in Arezzo) arrived in Rome in 1922, just a few years before Majorana matriculated. Like his colleagues mentioned above, he was a very skilled teacher and researcher in the f i eld of analytic and projective geometry.
Segrè remembers: “Severi gave excellent lectures, and I was pleased by the change of level from high school; here there was a real intellectual stimulus and a challenge to understand, perhaps even to try to invent something new” (Segrè 1993). He was known for his rather harsh personality: “Personal relationships with Severi, however complicated in appearance, were always reducible to two basically simple situations: either he had just taken offence or else he was in the process of giving it” (Roth 1963). An anecdote concerning Majorana is of interest here, as reported by Segrè:
Once, not having sufficiently prepared a lecture, Severi started a proof of a theorem the wrong way. Majorana immediately whispered that he would soon be in trouble, so we all anticipated what was to come. After a minute or two, Severi’s face reddened, and it became obvious that he did not know how to proceed. Some voices then murmured: “Majorana predicted it.” Severi did not know who Majorana was, but said haughtily, “Then let Mr.Majorana come forward.” Ettore was pushed to the blackboard, where he erased what Severi had written and gave the correct proof. It is noteworthy that Severi neither complimented him in any way nor, as far as I know, made any effort to become acquainted with him (Segrè 1993).
Another anecdote, once again reported by his friend Segrè, is about the old professor of descriptive geometry, Giulio Pittarelli, who was born in 1852 in Campochiaro in the region of Molise, but graduated in Naples in mathematics in 1874 and two years later in engineering.
While I was waiting to be called to an oral examination, Majorana gave me a synthetic proof for the existence of Villarceau’s circles on a torus. I did not fully understand it, but memorized it on the spot. As I entered the examination room, Professor Pittarelli asked me as was his wont, whether I had prepared a special topic. “Yes, on Villarceau’s circles,” I said, and I proceeded immediately to repeat Majorana’s words before I forgot them. The professor was impressed and congratulated me on such an elegant proof, which was new to him (Segrè 1993).
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Heisenberg was clearly struck by Ettore’s pessimistic character:
I would say that he was perhaps not pessimistic about physics especially, but rather about life in general. He was that kind of difficult fellow. Well, sometimes I thought perhaps he had had very difficult experiences in his life with other people, perhaps with girls or something like that. I don’t know. Anyway, I couldn’t make out why he, being such a young man, and such a brilliant young man, could always be so pessimistic. He was a very attractive fellow, so I liked him in our Leipzig group. I tried to see him frequently, and we had him with us for our ping pong games. Then I would sit down with him and ask him, not only about physics but more personal things, and so on. So I tried to keep in touch with him. He was a very attractive fellow but very nervous, so he would get into a state of some excitement if you talked to him. So he was a bit difficult.27
And again:
People tried to talk to him and he was always very kind and very polite and very shy. It was very diff i cult to get something out of him. But still, one could see at once that he was a very good physicist. When he made a remark, it was always to the point.28
The relationship between Majorana and Heisenberg struck many of those who witnessed their conversations, as one of these remembers, A. Recknagel:
I was very much impressed to see how Majorana would discuss with Professor Heisenberg as an equal. At the time I was still a student, and what a professor said was the truth for me, all the more so if that professor had been awarded a Nobel prize. Only gradually have I understood that you can criticize a professor the same way you criticize a student. But at the time if a young man like Majorana was able to discuss freely or even criticize a professor, that seemed astonishing to me. And that is the reason why I still remember Majorana today.29
from the book Ettore Majorana Unveiled Genius and Endless Mysteries by Salvatore Esposito
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