A Brilliant Darkness

It seems lately that even non-fiction books I enjoy I bitch about because they're badly written or badly structured or badly edited or not proofread at all. So I definitely want to write a short post about A Brilliant Darkness: The Extraordinary Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Ettore Majorana, the Troubled Genius of the Nuclear Age by João Magueijo. I don't know what possessed me to pick up the book as I have no affinity for physics and had never heard of Ettore Majorana, but I did and I'm happy to report this is that rare treat of a non-fiction book that is both very interesting and very well written.

In 1938, Majorana was a promising young nuclear physicist, ultimately seen as responsible for discovering the neutrino, who had spent several years off the radar due to depression or madness or just plain stubbornness. He was teaching at a university when he vanished, last seen on a ship to Naples. Some evidence suggests he may have been suicidal (and some of today's revisionist thinkers want him to have been upset over forecasting the terrible potential of nuclear power), but the last written communications from him indicate he had gotten past his darkest moments and was feeling more optimistic. In any case, he was never seen again, though he has had an Elvis-like afterlife, with sightings around the world and persistent reports that he dropped out and joined a monastery.

Most of the book consists of alternating chapters which focus on Majorana's life and on his physics (and the physics that came after him); try as I might, I couldn't grasp the science chapters, even with cute little illustrations of subatomic particles. But really, the narrative story of Majorana and of the author's interviews with various family members and conspiracy theorists is fascinating and crystal clear, and remarkably well-written. He stretches a bit to come to a thematically appropriate conclusion, but overall Magueijo, who is a physicist, is also a damned good writer (and, incidentally, quite good looking [see below], which is maybe why I picked the book up in the first place ;-). Whether you have a science background or not, I recommend this as a good read.