5 August

NEW - Ettore Majorana - theoretical physicist 

‘Genius’ who disappeared in mysterious circumstances

The theoretical physicist Ettore Majorana, whose work in the 1930s is still reaping benefits in nuclear, medical and computer science but ended with his sudden disappearance in 1938, was born on this day in 1906 in Catania in Sicily.  Majorana, who became part of a team of scientists working with the Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi in Rome, was regarded as a genius by his contemporaries, capable of solving in his head problems that others might take years to unravel. While much of Majorana’s work in such areas as particles, their exchange interaction, matter and anti-matter, might seem beyond the comprehension of non-scientists, it has consequences still seen today.  More reliable nuclear reactors, advancements in cancer scans and treatments, more precise radiation dosages in radiotherapy, plus developments in quantum computing, can all be traced back to theories put forward by Majorana. Read more…

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Leonardo Leo - composer

Baroque musician known for his sense of humour

A prolific composer of comic operas, Leonardo Leo was born on this day in 1694 in San Vito degli Schiavoni (now known as San Vito dei Normanni) in Puglia.  His most famous comic opera was Amor vuol sofferenza - Love requires suffering - which he produced in 1739. It later became better known as La finta frascatana, and received a lot of praise, but Leo was equally admired for his serious operas and sacred music. He has been credited with forming the Neapolitan style of opera composition.  He was enrolled as a young boy as a student at the Conservatorio della Pietà dei Turchini in Naples and was a pupil first of Francesco Provenzale and later of Nicola Fago. It has been speculated that he may have been taught by Alessandro Scarlatti, but it has since been proved by music historians that he could not possibly have studied with the composer.  Read more…

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Felice Casson - politician and magistrate

His investigations revealed existence of Operation Gladio

Felice Casson, the magistrate whose investigations exposed the existence of the NATO-backed secret army codenamed Gladio, was born on this day in 1953 in Chioggia, near Venice.  A former mayor of Venice and a Democratic Party senator, Casson devoted much of his career in the judiciary to fighting corruption and rooting out terrorists.  In 1984, his interest in terrorism led him to examine the unsolved mystery of the Peteano bombing in 1972, in which three Carabinieri officers were killed by a car bomb placed under an abandoned Fiat 500 in a tiny hamlet close to the border with Yugoslavia. Casson discovered flaws in the original investigation into the bombing, which at the time was blamed on the left-wing extremist group the Red Brigades, who would later be responsible for the kidnap and murder of Aldo Moro, a former prime minister.  Read more…

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Antonio Cesti – opera composer

Singer and organist wrote operas and church music

Composer Pietro Marc’Antonio Cesti was baptised on this day in 1623 in Arezzo in Tuscany. It was also probably the date of his birth.  One of the leading composers of the 17th century, Cesti is said to have written about 100 operas, although only 15 are known today.  He joined the order of Friars Minor, or Franciscans, a Catholic religious group founded by St Francis of Assisi in 1637.  Cesti studied first in Rome and then moved to Venice, where his first known opera, Orontea, was produced in 1649.  In 1652 he became chapel master to Archduke Ferdinand of Austria at Innsbruck and from 1669 he was vice chapel master to the imperial court in Vienna.  Throughout the 17th century his operas were widely performed in Italy. His most famous operas, Il pomo d’oro, Dori and Orontea, have survived to this day.  Read more…

Franco Lucentini – author

Writer was one half of a famous thriller-writing partnership

The novelist Franco Lucentini, who achieved success with Carlo Fruttero in a remarkable literary association, died on this day in 2002 in Turin.  A news correspondent and editor, Lucentini met Fruttero in 1953 in Paris and they started working together as journalists and translators.  But they were best known for the mystery thrillers they produced together.  After choosing a subject they would take it in turns to write and then edit the material until a novel was complete.  Their most popular books were La donna della domenica (The Sunday Woman), which was later made into a film and La verità sul caso D (The D Case), which was based on an unfinished work by Charles Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.  Lucentini fell foul of the Fascist regime while studying at the University of Rome because of distributing anti-war messages among his fellow students. Read more…

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Antonio Barberini – Cardinal

Pope’s nephew amassed fortune and became patron of the arts

Catholic cardinal, military leader and patron of the arts, Antonio Barberini was born on this day in 1607 in Rome.  As one of the cardinal-nephews of Pope Urban VIII he helped to shape the politics, religion, art and music of 17th century Italy and took part in many papal conclaves.  He is sometimes referred to as Antonio the Younger, or Antonio Barberini Iuniore, to distinguish him from his uncle, Antonio Marcello Barberini.  Antonio was the youngest of six children born to Carlo Barberini and Costanza Magalotti. Like his brothers, he was educated at the Collegio Romano.  His brother, Francesco Barberini, became Grand Inquisitor of the Roman Inquisition.  His uncle, Maffeo Barberini, who was elected as Pope the day after Antonio’s 16th birthday and became Pope Urban VIII, was notorious for nepotism and appointed Antonio as a cardinal. Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Pope of Physics: Enrico Fermi and the Birth of the Atomic Age, by Gino Segrè and Bettina Hoerlin

Enrico Fermi is unquestionably among the greats of the world's physicists, the most famous Italian scientist since Galileo. Called the Pope by his peers, he was regarded as infallible in his instincts and research. His discoveries changed our world; they led to weapons of mass destruction and conversely to life-saving medical interventions.  This unassuming man struggled with issues relevant today, such as the threat of nuclear annihilation and the relationship of science to politics. Fleeing fascism and anti-semitism, Fermi became a leading figure in America's most secret project: building the atomic bomb. The last physicist who mastered all branches of the discipline, Fermi was a rare mixture of theorist and experimentalist. His rich legacy encompasses key advances in fields as diverse as comic rays, nuclear technology, and early computers.  In The Pope of Physics, Gino Segrè and Bettina Hoerlin bring this scientific visionary to life. An examination of the human dramas that touched Fermi’s life as well as a thrilling history of scientific innovation in the 20th century, this is the comprehensive biography that Fermi deserves.

Gino Segrè - nephew of Nobel laureate physicist Emilio Segrè - is an Italian-American physicist and professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of several books on the history of science, particularly on atomic physics.  Bettina Hoerlin taught healthcare disparities at the University of Pennsylvania and is a former Health Commissioner of Philadelphia. She was brought up in Los Alamos, New Mexico, which gained notoriety as the base for the highly secretive Manhattan Project, set up during World War Two to produce the first nuclear weapons.

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Ettore Majorana - theoretical physicist

‘Genius’ who disappeared in mysterious circumstances

Ettore Majorana was seen by colleagues
as both a genius and an enigma

The theoretical physicist Ettore Majorana, whose work in the 1930s is still reaping profound benefits in nuclear, medical and computer science but ended with his sudden disappearance in 1938, was born on this day in 1906 in Catania in Sicily.

Majorana, who became part of a team of scientists working with the Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi in Rome, was regarded as a genius by his contemporaries, capable of solving in his head problems that others might take years to unravel.

While much of Majorana’s work in such areas as particles, their exchange interaction, matter and anti-matter, might seem dry and beyond the comprehension of non-scientists, it has consequences still seen today.

More reliable designs for nuclear reactors, advancements in medical isotopes used in cancer scans and treatments, more precise radiation dosages in radiotherapy, plus technological developments in quantum computing, can all be traced back to theories put forward by Majorana.

Yet his mysterious disappearance when seemingly on the cusp of achieving immortal status in the scientific world has given rise to as much discussion as the legacy of his work.

Majorana hailed from a scientific family. His father, Fabio, was an engineer in the telegraph and telephone industries, while an uncle, Quirino Majorana, was an experimental physicist at the University of Bologna.

Ettore Majorana enrolled at the Sapienza University of Rome to study engineering in 1923, but switched to physics in 1928 with the encouragement of Emilio Segrè, a fellow student who would go on to become a leading nuclear physicist and radiochemist and, like Fermi, a winner of the Nobel Prize.

A brilliant student, Majorana was still in his early 20s when he joined the group of scientists assembled by Fermi, professor of theoretical physics at the University of Rome, who became known as the "Via Panisperna boys", named after the street address of their laboratory.

Majorana's disappearance, as reported by the
Milan newspaper Domenica del Corriere

Yet, for all his brilliance, Majorana as a person was an enigma. Unlike some of his colleagues, he never craved fame or recognition. He was rarely satisfied with a piece of work and would seldom publish his findings. Colleagues would describe him as distant and withdrawn.

He joined Mussolini’s National Fascist Party in 1933 and spent time in Leipzig, working with Werner Heisenberg, a theoretical physicist who would in time become a scientist on Germany’s nuclear programme in World War Two. The Nazis came to power while Majorana was there and he expressed solidarity with many of Hitler’s views and policies.

Shortly before his disappearance, he had been appointed a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Naples. 

He vanished during or after a trip to Palermo in March, 1938. It was thought he might have been planning to visit his friend, Emilio Segrè, who was a professor at the university there.

But a letter sent by Majorana while he was in the Sicilian capital suggested a different reason for his journey. It was to Professor Antonio Carrelli, the director of the Physics Institute at the University of Naples, seemingly signalling his resignation. It spoke of making “a decision that has become unavoidable”.

Confusingly - before the original letter arrived - Carrelli received a telegram from Majorana apparently withdrawing his resignation and saying that he was returning to Naples.

Majorana bought a ticket for a boat back to Naples but while porters found luggage in his cabin after the passengers had disembarked, there was no sign of Majorana, nor any proof that he had ever been on board. 

Majorana's name is among those on a plaque marking
the Rome base of the "Via Panisperna boys"

Multiple theories have been put forward to explain his disappearance, including suicide, murder, a desire to start a new life in another country, or even that he had decided to seek the anonymity of life in a monastery.

Proponents of the suicide theory suggested that Majorana realised that the research in which he had been involved would eventually lead to the creation of highly destructive weapons and suffered intolerable remorse as a consequence.

Others theorised that, during his time in Germany, he had learned too much about Nazi ambitions to develop a nuclear bomb and was murdered by Nazi agents.

But with no body ever found, and no witnesses to any suicide or murder, neither could be proved.

Leonardo Sciascia, the Sicilian writer, supported the idea that Majorana was appalled at the thought of his works being used to create nuclear explosives but suggested that, as a devout Catholic, he would have more likely sought to live an anonymous life in a monastery or other religious retreat than to take his own life.

The official explanation - reached 77 years after he vanished - is that he emigrated to South America.

A postage stamp issued on the
centenary of Majorana's birth

This gained credence in 2011 when a supposed witness made a statement about meeting Majorana in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, in the years after World War Two. A photo also came to light, taken in Argentina 1955 of a man bearing several facial similarities to Majorana.

The case looking into his disappearance was reopened in Italy as a result. Four years later, the Rome Attorney’s Office was sufficiently satisfied that Majorana had been alive and living in Venezuela in the 1950s to declare the case closed, with no crime to investigate.

In 2025, the civil section of the Court of Rome issued a decree declaring Majorana’s presumed death.

Today, academics in the field of theoretical physics encounter his name recalled in such things as the Majorana equation, Majorana fermions, and Microsoft’s Majorana 1, a device used in the development of quantum computers. 

A Majorana Prize is awarded annually for outstanding contributions to theoretical and mathematical physics. A postage stamp commemorating his life was issued in 2006 on the centenary of his birth.

Catania's Cattedrale di Sant'Agata is a beautiful
example of Sicilian Baroque architecture

Travel tip:

The city of Catania, which is located on the east coast of Sicily facing the Ionian Sea, is one of the ten biggest cities in Italy, with a population including the environs of 1.12 million. A little like Naples, which sits in the shadow of Vesuvius, Catania lives with the constant threat of a natural catastrophe, more so given that its neighbour, Mount Etna, is active and regularly erupts, if not with explosive force. Catania has also been virtually destroyed by earthquakes twice, in 1169 as well as 1693. As such it has a reputation for living life to the full. In the Renaissance, it was one of Italy's most important cultural, artistic and political centres and enjoys a rich cultural legacy today, with numerous museums and churches, theatres and parks, and many restaurants. Catania’s historic centre is a showcase of Sicilian Baroque, rebuilt after the 1693 earthquake using the city’s signature black lava stone. A notable example is the Duomo of Sant’Agata, a monumental cathedral, home to the relics of St Agatha and framed by a grand piazza, at the centre of which is the Fontana dell’Elefante, the symbol of the city - a Roman basalt elephant supporting an obelisk. 

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The University of Naples Federico II has its
headquarters building in Corso Umberto I

Travel tip:

The University of Naples Federico II, where Ettore Majorana was appointed a professor shortly before he disappeared, was founded in 1224 by the Emperor Frederick II. It is one of Europe’s most historically significant universities: the oldest public, secular university in the world.  One of its most famous students was the theologian and philosopher, Thomas Aquinas, who went on to lecture there in the 13th century. Other alumni include Enrico De Nicola, the first President of the Italian Republic, and two other presidents, Giovanni Leone and Giorgio Napolitano. The university’s main locations include the central headquarters in Corso Umberto I, with additional sites in Portici, Torre del Greco, Anacapri, Avellino, and Bellizzi. A former college built in the 16th century in Via Paladino, in the area of Spaccanapoli, has been one of the university’s main buildings since 1777. With more than 70,000 students, 180 degree programmes across 26 departments, and strong research output, especially in engineering, medicine, and agricultural sciences, it ranks second among Italy’s major universities and is the leading university in Southern Italy.

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More reading:

Enrico Fermi, dubbed the architect of the nuclear age

The Italian nuclear physicist who defected to the Soviet Union

Leonardo Sciascia, the writer who denounced complicity between government and the Mafia

Also on this day: 

1607: The birth of Cardinal Antonio Barberini, patron of the arts 

1623: The birth of composer Antonio Cesti

1694: The birth of comic opera composer Leonardo Leo

1953: The birth of Felice Casson, magistrate who exposed NATO’s secret army 

2002: The death of novelist Franco Lucentini

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4 August

Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici - banker

Art enthusiast who was Botticelli’s major patron

The Florentine banker and politician Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, who was a significant figure in Renaissance art as the main sponsor and patron of the painter Sandro Botticelli, was born on this day in 1463.  The great-grandson of Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici, the founder of the Medici bank, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco belonged to the junior, sometimes known as ‘Popolani’ branch of the House of Medici.  In 1476, when he and his brother, Giovanni, were still boys, their father, Pierfrancesco de’ Medici the Elder, died. They became wards, effectively, of their cousin, Lorenzo il Magnifico - Lorenzo the Magnificent - a member of the senior branch of the family and the effective ruler of Florence.  Relations between the two branches were tense and not helped when Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco discovered, on becoming an adult, that Lorenzo il Magnifico had plundered a considerable sum from he and his brother’s joint inheritance. Read more…

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Giovanni Spadolini - politician

The first non-Christian Democrat to lead Italian Republic

Giovanni Spadolini, who was the Italian Republic’s first prime minister not to be drawn from the Christian Democrats and was one of Italy's most respected politicians, died on this day in 1994.  In a country where leading politicians and businessmen rarely survive a whole career without becoming embroiled in one corruption scandal or another, he went to the grave with his reputation for honesty intact.  Although he was an expert on Italian unification and became a professor of contemporary history at the University of Florence when he was only 25, a background that gave him a deep knowledge of Italian politics, he first built a career as a journalist.  He became a political columnist for several magazines and newspapers, including Il Borghese, Il Mondo and Il Messaggero, and was appointed editor of the Bologna daily II Resto del Carlino in 1955, at the age of 30.  Read more…

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Anita Garibaldi – national heroine of Italy

Brave wife of Giuseppe Garibaldi was a freedom fighter

Anita Garibaldi, the Brazilian wife of Italy’s revolutionary hero Giuseppe Garibaldi, died in the arms of her husband on this day in 1849 in Mandriole, near Ravenna, in Emilia-Romagna.  She was pregnant and also ill with malaria, but she was having to retreat from Austrian and French troops with the Garibaldian Legion. After her death, her body had to be hurriedly buried, and it was said to have been later dug up by a dog.  A Brazilian revolutionary, Anita had fought alongside Garibaldi in his campaigns, after meeting him in her home country in 1839.  She was born Ana Maria di Jesus Ribeiro in 1821 in Laguna in Brazil. She was the third of ten children born to a poor family.  Anita met Garibaldi, who was a sailor of Ligurian descent, after he had left Europe in 1836 and was fighting on behalf of the separatist Riograndense republic in southern Brazil. Read more…

Pope Urban VII

Pope for just 12 days but introduced world's first smoking ban

Pope Urban VII was born Giovanni Battista Castagna on this day in 1521 in Rome.  Although his 12-day papacy in 1590 was the shortest in history, he is remembered as being the first person in the world to declare a ban on smoking.  He was against the use of tobacco generally, threatening to excommunicate anyone who ‘took tobacco in the porchway of, or inside a church, whether it be by chewing it, smoking it with a pipe, or sniffing it in powdered form through the nose’.  The ban is thought to have been upheld for the most part until 1724, when Pope Benedict XIII, himself a smoker, repealed it.  Castagna was the son of a nobleman of Genovese origin and studied in universities all over Italy. He obtained a doctorate in civil law and canon law from the University of Bologna.  He served as a constitutional lawyer to Pope Julius III and was then ordained a priest.  Read more…

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Lucrezia Maria Romola de’ Medici – noblewoman

Daughter of Lorenzo the Magnificent supported popes and poets

Lucrezia Maria Romola de’ Medici, who as a newborn baby inspired Sandro Botticelli’s depiction of baby Jesus in one of his paintings, was born on this day in 1470 in the Republic of Florence.  After her brother became Pope Leo X, Lucrezia helped him fund papal building projects in Florence and Rome. She also raised money to pay a ransom and secure the release of her husband when he was taken prisoner by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.  She had 11 children, many of whom were to play an important part in the history of Renaissance Europe.  Lucrezia was the eldest daughter of Lorenzo de’ Medici and Clarice Orsini. After her birth, Botticelli painted Our Lady of the Magnificat, which is now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, and used her image as a baby as the model for the figure of the newborn Christ in his masterpiece.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Botticelli, by Frank Zöllner

This celebration of the life and art of the Renaissance genius presents Sandro Botticelli s complete paintings and offers a comprehensive and thoroughly up-to-date study of his work.  Botticelli is one of the most admired artists of the Renaissance period and his seductive Venus and graceful Primavera are among the world s most recognisable works of art. This catalogue raisonné of Botticelli’s paintings offers more than two hundred full-colour illustrations and meticulous scholarship by the distinguished Renaissance art historian Frank Zöllner. Botticelli has luscious reproductions and exquisite detail. Presented in chronological order, the facts of Botticelli’s life and career are insightfully discussed against the background of the artistic upheaval that marked the Renaissance period. The artist's reinterpretations of ancient myths as well as his religious paintings are thoughtfully explored in a volume that will please scholars and delight lovers of fine art books everywhere.

Frank Zöllner is a German art historian. He has been a professor of art history at Leipzig University since 1996. He is among the leading authorities on the life and works of Leonardo da Vinci, about whom he has written numerous publications. 

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3 August

Imperia Cognati - courtesan

Prostitute who became a celebrity

Imperia Cognati, who acquired celebrity status in Rome in the early 16th century as a courtesan to a number of rich and powerful figures, was born on this day in 1486.  Courtesans were originally the female companions of courtiers of the papal court, whose duties required them to be educated and familiar with etiquette, so that they could participate in the formalities of court life and take part in polite conversation.  In time, however, in some cases their companionship became of a more intimate nature and they became the mistresses of their courtiers, who in the papal court were clerics not permitted to marry.  It was common, too, for courtesans to be the companions of several clients simultaneously.  They were in effect a new class of prostitute, refined and educated enough to hold their own in polite society.  Read more…

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Omero Antonutti - actor and voice dubber

Narrator of Oscar-winning Life is Beautiful had long career

The actor Omero Antonutti, who acted in around 60 films and was the Italian voice of many international stars, was born on this day in 1935 in Basiliano, a village about 13km (eight miles) west of the city of Udine in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of northeast Italy.   His most acclaimed performance came in Padre padrone, a 1977 film directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, a Palme d’Or winner at Cannes that was considered by many critics to be the co-directing brothers’ finest work.  Antonutti worked with the Taviani brothers again on La notte di San Lorenzo (1982), which won the Grand Prix du Jury at Cannes, and Kaos (1984), in which he took the part of the playwright Luigi Pirandello in a film based on some of Pirandello’s own short stories.  He was often asked to portray significant figures in dramatisations of real-life events, such as Roberto Calvi, the ill-fated chairman of the Banco Ambrosiano. Read more…

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La Scala - opera and ballet theatre

First night at the world’s most famous opera house

Milan’s Teatro alla Scala was officially inaugurated on this day in 1778.  Known to Italians simply as La Scala, the theatre has become the leading opera house in the world and many famous artists have appeared there. A fire had destroyed the Teatro Regio Ducale, which had previously been the home of opera in Milan. A group of 90 wealthy patrons, the owners of private boxes in the theatre, wrote to Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Este asking that a new theatre be built.  The new theatre was built on the site of the former Church of Santa Maria alla Scala, which is how the theatre got its name. The church was deconsecrated and demolished to make way for the theatre.  With the cost of the project met by the 90 patrons, who paid in advance for boxes, the new theatre was designed by neoclassical architect Giuseppe Piermarini and at the official opening on 3 August 1778, Antonio Salieri’s opera L’Europa riconosciuta was premiered.  Read more…

Antonio da Sangallo the Younger - architect

Talented Florentine was commissioned by the Popes

Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, who left his mark on Rome during the Renaissance, died on this day in 1546 in Terni in Umbria.  Sangallo was the chief architect on St Peter’s Basilica from 1520 onwards and built many other beautiful churches and palaces in the city and throughout the Papal States.  He was born Antonio Cordiani in Florence in 1484. His grandfather had been a woodworker and his uncles, Giuliano and Antonio da Sangallo, were architects.  The young man followed his uncles to Rome to pursue a career in architecture and ended up taking the name Sangallo himself.  He became an assistant to Donato Bramante and started by preparing sketches for his master.  Recognising his talent, Bramante gave Sangallo projects to complete with no more than an outline of the design and motifs.  Sangallo’s first major commission was for the Church of Santa Maria di Loreto in 1507.  Read more…

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Francesco Ferruccio - military leader

Florentine soldier celebrated in Italy’s national anthem 

Francesco Ferruccio, the military leader whose heroic attempt to defend Florence against the powerful army of the Holy Roman Empire is recalled in Italy’s national anthem, died on the battlefield on this day in 1530.  A Florentine by birth, Ferruccio had been charged with leading the army of the Republic of Florence as the city came under attack during the War of the League of Cognac, when the Pope Clement VII connived with the emperor Charles V to overthrow the republic and restore power in Florence to his own family, the Medici.  Despite being outnumbered, Ferruccio’s soldiers engaged the Imperial forces at Gavinana, just outside Florence, killed their leader and drove them back, only for the enemy to be reinforced by the arrival of 2,000 German mercenaries under the leadership of the condottiero, Fabrizio Maramaldo.  Read more...

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Book of the Day: The Renaissance Courtesan in Words, Letters and Images: Social Amphibology and Moral Framing, by Eugenio L Giusti

Although throughout history women had been confined to enclosed spaces, the advent of courtly life and culture required that men and women would share and interact in public arenas like the princely courts, intellectual salons, or gambling houses. But also in all of these public spaces behavioural rules and regulations aimed to control women’s bodies by equating honesty with chastity. The Renaissance Courtesan in Words, Letters and Images analyses how in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries women in general, and in particular prostitutes and courtesans, repeatedly challenged those rules in the attempt to affirm their individual freedom. This analysis has three complementary approaches: first, an historical approach where census documents and sumptuary laws are investigated in order to describe the ways in which the political establishment unsuccessfully attempts to enforce its rules over women’s behaviour; second, a literary approach where works by Castigione, Aretino, Bandello, and Veronica Franco are analysed in order to emphasise the terminological proximity between the legal and the literary languages, and the evolution of the term «courtesan» with its attribute «honest»; a third - visual - approach looks at prints of women’s clothing, made by 16th and 17th century artists.

Eugenio Giusti is Associate Professor of Italian at Vassar College in New York State. He received a PhD in Medieval Italian Literature from New York University. 

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