Quirino Majorana (28 October 1871 – 31 July 1957) was an

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

experimental physicist Experimental physics is the category of disciplines and sub-disciplines in the field of physics that are concerned with the observation of physical phenomena and experiments. Methods vary from discipline to discipline, from simple experiments and ...

who investigated a wide range of phenomena during his long career as professor of physics at the Universities of Rome,

Turin Turin ( , Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The ...

(1916–1921), and

Bologna Bologna (, , ; egl, label=Emilian language, Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 1 ...

(1921–1934).

Work

Majorana performed a long series of very sensitive gravity shielding experiments from 1918 to 1922, which have never been reproduced. Majorana's experiments determined that mercury or lead around a suspended lead sphere acted as a screen and slightly decreased the Earth's gravitational pull. No attempts have been made to reproduce his results using the same experimental techniques. Other researchers have concluded from other data that if gravitational absorption does exist, it must be at least five orders of magnitude smaller than Majorana's experiments suggest. Critical of

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...

relativity theory The theory of relativity usually encompasses two interrelated theories by Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity, proposed and published in 1905 and 1915, respectively. Special relativity applies to all physical phenomena in ...

, Majorana tried to disprove Einstein’s postulate on the constancy of the

speed of light The speed of light in vacuum, commonly denoted , is a universal physical constant that is important in many areas of physics. The speed of light is exactly equal to ). According to the special theory of relativity, is the upper limit ...

, but he failed, and therefore his experiments confirmed Einstein's postulate. Majorana also confirmed

Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author (described in his time as a " natural philosopher"), widely recognised as one of the grea ...

’s law of

universal gravitation Newton's law of universal gravitation is usually stated as that every particle attracts every other particle in the universe with a force that is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the dist ...

to high precision. His later work at

was influenced by correspondence with his nephew

Ettore Majorana Ettore Majorana (,, uploaded 19 April 2013, retrieved 14 December 2019 ; born on 5 August 1906 – possibly dying after 1959) was an Italian theoretical physicist who worked on neutrino masses. On 25 March 1938, he disappeared under mysteri ...

(1906–1938), another physicist.

References

Works

Majorana, Quirino – Scarica elettrica attraverso i gas e i raggi Röntgen, 1897 – BEIC 6486808

Bibliography

* Quirino Majorana, "Su di un fenomeno fotoelettrico constabile con gli audion," '' Rendiconti Accademia dei Lincei'', V7, pp. 801–806 (1928). * Quirino Majorana, "Azione della luce su sottili lamine metalliche," '' La Ricerca Scientifica'' National Research Council, V1 (1935). * Quirino Majorana, "Agli albori dell'eletricità. Galvani e la scienza moderna," '' Sapere'', pp. 261–265 (Oct 1937). * Quirino Majorana, "Ulteriori ricerche sull'azione della luce su sottili lamine metallische," '' Il Nuovo Cimento'', V15, pp. 573–593 (1938). {{DEFAULTSORT:Majorana, Quirino 20th-century Italian physicists 1871 births 1957 deaths Academic staff of the University of Turin Academic staff of the University of Bologna Academic staff of the Sapienza University of Rome Scientists from Sicily