Życie Ettore Majorany

On the hundredth birth anniversary of Ettore Majorana, Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences allowed me to organize the session devoted to his life and scientific work. Due to the scarcity of informative texts published in Polish, Majorana is known in Poland mainly just as the author of scientific concepts “Majorana forces” and “Majorana neutrino”. This does not reflect the significance of Majorana’s work for the development of modern physics. My contribution presented here recalls the examples of the scientific brilliance of Majorana and the strange ways of his life. His role in the achievements of Enrico Fermi’s group is discussed, as well as his interaction with Werner Heisenberg. His surprising withdrawal from the scientific life, sudden return with his most famous “neutrino” paper and final disappearance, interpreted in various ways by many contemporaries, are described in some detail. Other texts concern specific problems solved by him. First consistent version of the theory of nuclear forces is discussed by Kazimierz Bodek, the formalism for the description of the particles with arbitrary spin is presented by Henryk Arodź, and the theory of “Majorana neutrino”, surprisingly revived in the XXI century, is analyzed by Marek Zrałek.