Majorana’s presence in contemporary physics

This work presents an approach to the scientific life of Ettore Majorana with the aim of providing support for didactic transpositions during undergraduate courses in physics, as well as during academic or professional master’s courses in physics teaching. Specially discussed are Majorana’s contributions to the formulation of the strong interaction theory and to the revision of Dirac’s theory, with the consequent emergence of the Majorana neutrino and Majorana fermions. Also presented are the results obtained by Majorana in 1932, which were used by Rabi in the article that is considered the origin of nuclear magnetic resonance.

Keywords:
Majorana; contemporary physics; neutrinos; fermions; beta decay