Being a lover of maths myself, the idea of a four part series on the key discoveries, and people, that enabled us to ask the questions we ask today, seemed like a very interesting concept. But does it have the glamour to attract audiences who, for instance, have shivers down their spine when they hear phrases such as "if Gina has six apples, and Tania has four apples?" Well, with the highly engaging Marcus du Sautoy presenting, the subject matter grabs hold and sucks you in.

Du Sautoy, named by The Independent on Sunday as one of the UK's leading scientists, is the Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, and has a significant media presence: TV series such as The Royal Institute Christmas Lectures, The Code, Faster than the speed of light?, and Horizon: The Hunt for AI. He has also penned a series of books, including The Music of the Primes and The Num8er My5teries: A Mathematical Odyssey Through Everyday Life. He has also been on Radio discussing the relationship between music and maths.

His TV series The Story of Maths charts the development of the discipline from ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece, and ends with the present day. He tells us some interesting facts: our times system based on units of 60 is based on the Babylonian Base 60 number system; in India, he takes us to one of mathematics' "holy places" to see where zero first came into being; we learn that Carl Friedrich Gauss, at the age of 24, was discovered a new way of handling equations called modular arithmetic; and finally, we hear about those people whose minds considered concepts such as infinity, and whether some things are more infinite than others.

Do check out the videos below, and also du Sautoy's website: http://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/dusautoy/

After the interval we were treated to three Spanish composers. The first was from his Amadeo Vives’ zarzuela, Doña Francisquita: the famous second act aria "Por el humo se sabe." Flόrez’s dramatic, desperate outburst on the phrase “Se me entra por los ojos y a veces sueño que ya la adoro” with its alternating Ab4/G4 scoring, was very powerful. The second piece was a playful ditty called “El mismo rey del moro” from José Serrano’s La algería del batallόn. Finally we heard the Intermezzo from Gerόnima Giménez’s La boda de Luis Alonso. The vitality with which the orchestra executed the piece was palpable, with committed, aggressive violins, and a sensational performance by the brass section.

With Lehár’s “Dein is mein ganzes Herz” and Brodzsky’s “Be My Love” Flόrez reminded us why the tenor voice has such beautiful melodies composed for it. The emotional delivery of the Lehár was infectious, and much credit should be given to the orchestra for judging correctly the level of sentimentality required. His delivery of “Be My Love” brought a tear to the eyes of a few of the audience members sitting around me. A few people around me were singing it to themselves as we waited for the final aria on the program. 

Flόrez introduced the next piece, “Allegro io son” from Donizetti’s Rita, telling us that it was about a man who had lost his wife. Though it was no great loss as he didn’t want her anyway! There were several octave leaps up to B4, plus an octave jump up to C5. The high notes were effortless, amazingly so given the arias he had performed thus far. Flόrez’s humour shone through as he sang his “Tra la la la la”lines. It earned him whistles from the arena. A wave of foot-stomping went through the crowd as we waited to see what encores we would be getting.

Flόrez’s signature piece, “Ah, mes amis” from La fille du regiment was the first encore. The nine C5’s penetrating the Hall like a laser, on pitch and cutting straight through the orchestra. Next up, we had “La donna è mobile,” from Rigoletto. Flόrez's tempo slower than usual, showing off his astounding breath control and beautiful legato singing. He crowned the aria with a magnificent C5. The last piece, Granada, was a perfect ending. Flόrez created a wonderful texture to the phrases, and the Morish triplets at the end sent shivers down my spine.

The concert was an overwhelming success for Flόrez, and for Ian Rosenblatt’s Recital Series.

The May edition of Physics World will lead with a fascinating story about the transit of the planet Venus across the disk of the Sun, which is to occur on the 5th or 6th (depending on your time zone) of June this year. Transits occur in pairs separated by eight years, with the gap between pairs of transits alternating between 105.5 and 121.5 years. The last transit, the first of the pair to occur in our lifetimes, was in 2004. The earliest recorded transit was in 1639. The following transits were recorded in pairs: 1761 and 1769, and 1874 and 1882. The pair of transits will not occur again until 2117 and 2125. The transit will take approximately six hours, and viewers will see a small black dot passing slowly across the face of the Sun. Venus has been the brightest star in the sky for most of March, and has been in a visible conjunction with Jupiter recently as well. In the picture below, Venus is to the left of the Moon, with Jupiter below it.

Normally, when Venus passes between the Earth and the Sun, it does so either above or below the Sun, thus passing unnoticed. However, during these transits, Venus crosses the ecliptic, the plane the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere as seen from the Earth. When this happens, an occultation of the Sun occurs - an occultation being the process where one object is hidden by another object by passing between the first object and the observer, much like the process of a solar eclipse. Eclipses, transits and occultations occur at times of syzygy, when three celestial bodies, such as the Sun, Earth and Venus, are configured in a straight line. In the case of a solar eclipse, the Moon, as seen from the Earth, is the same size as the Sun, and so totally obscures the Sun from the point of view of the Earth. In the case of the Sun's occultation by Venus, only a tiny part of the Sun's disk is obscured as Venus, though bigger than the Moon in reality, looks much smaller when viewed from the Earth.

The first person to predict a transit of Venus was the mathematician, astronomer and astrologer Johannes Kepler. In 1627 he made some predictions relating to transits that would occur in the 17th and 18th Centuries. His first prediction was for the 1631 transit. Unfortunately, as the tables he used to make the prediction contained inaccuracies, he did not realise that the transit would not be visable from mainland Europe. Because of this, the first transit of Venus to be predicted went unobserved. Kepler also predicted that there would be a "near miss," i.e. that Venus would pass close to the Sun without causing an occultation, in 1639.

In the early to mid 1630’s, astronomer Jeremiah Horrocks believed that Venus, instead of passing the Sun, would indeed make a transit. Horrocks believed there to be inaccuracies in the tables used by Kepler to predict the 1639 “near miss,” and had started to make observations of his own. He entered into correspondence with another English astronomer, William Crabtree, and the two of them became, on 4 December 1639, the first recorded people to observe a transit of Venus. For Horrocks, it was nearly a disaster, as the transit, due to start at 3pm, was obscured by cloud. It cleared at 3:15pm, allowing Horrocks to view it for a further half hour until sunset. Horrocks and Crabtree managed to view the transit by focusing the image of Sun through a telescope and projecting it onto a piece of card. They could then watch the little black dot that was Venus make its way across the card. Horrocks died only a couple of years later in 1641. He was only 22 years old.

The transit has also sparked, in more recent times, the imagination of the author Andrea Wulf whose book, called Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens, is now available. It is an "absorbing account" of the 1761 and 1769 scientific expeditions to record the exact time and duration of the transits, which occurred all over the world. As Wulf says in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, "this heavenly rendezvous spurred the first international scientific collaboration, laying the foundation of modern science." (1) Why did this happen? Well, it was all to do with measuring the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

To do this properly, readings had to be taken from both the Southern and Northern Hemispheres, in as many locations as possible. What is so amazing is that this occured during a period of global warfare: the Seven Years War. "[H]undreds of astronomers from the belligerent nations joined together to plan expeditions to see the transit from India, the Arctic Circle, Siberia, Tahiti, Newfoundland, Baja California and many other places..." (2) The planning of such a collaboration was all the more difficult as the means of communication available was much slower than today: "a letter posted in Philadelphia took two to three months to reach London." (3) In the video below, Wulf discusses her book, and gives examples of the personal stories of the astronomers that took part, and also the world leaders, such as Catherine the Great of Russia, who's minds were captured by the idea of "Chasing Venus."

The 1761 transit also provided Russian polymath, scientist and writer, and founder of the University of Moscow, Mikhail Lomonosov, with the conditions to discover that Venus had an atmosphere. He made observations of the physical properties of the planet during the occultation, which were published in his paper The Appearance of Venus on Sun as It was Observed at the St Petersburg Emperor’s Academy of Sciences on May 26, 1761:

"I found a black indentation from the coming Venus, which replaced the former vague spot. I continued to look attentively how the trailing side of the planet approaches the Sun; suddenly, a hair-thin bright radiance (luminescence) between Venus’ trailed side and solar edge appeared that lasted only less than a second.
 
"Before the Venus ingress, when its front side approached the solar edge at about one tenth of the planet’s diameter, a bulge set up which progressively became more pronounced as Venus came to leave the Sun. Soon after that the bulge disappeared and instead, Venus appeared with no edge. Similar to the ingress phase, the last touch of the planet’s trailing side at the emergence was also accompanied by a small break and solar edge obscuration." (4)

As a result of these observations, Lomonosov concluded that "the planet Venus is surrounded by a distinguished air atmosphere similar (or even possibly larger) than that [which] is poured over our Earth." (5)

The planet Venus has always fascinated us from earliest times. In Greek mythology Aphrodite, who later became Venus in Roman mythology, was a deity associated with beauty, pleasure and sexuality. In her common form, Aphrodite Pandemos, she was born of Zeus and Dione, and was the legendary beauty who provoked wars and constantly cuckolded her long-suffering husband, Hephaestus (Roman: Vulcan). However, in Hesiod's Theogony (circa 700BC), she was born when Cronous (Roman: Saturn) castrated his father, Ouranos (Roman: Uranus), and threw his severed genitals into the sea. From the foam these created, arose Aphrodite Ourania, the Heavenly Aphrodite, fully formed. In this version of the myth, she predates Zeus, and was contemporanious with the Titans. Hers was a more exalted cult, representing the love of body, mind and soul.

This idea of Venus as both a force of attraction, and as one of mind and soul, can be seen in the differing stances taken by exoteric and esoteric astrology. In exoteric astrology, Venus is the planet of love and relationships: "Venus is significator...of all expressions of love, and especially so when it comes to the romantic variety." (6) Here is Aphrodite Pandemos. While in esoteric astrology, the planet is linked to the principle of mind: “[t]hrough Venus [one] comes under the power of the mind, transmuted into wisdom through the instrumentality of love.” (7) Here we have Aphrodite Ourania.

It is perhaps appropriate that this planet, one to which we have ascribed the attributes of mind, relationships, and something deeper, should be the inspiration for science's first global collaboration. Andrea Wulf put's it so eloquently when she says that "[t]he most important result of this effort...was the successful collaboration of an international community of scientists—a precedent that has served humankind well. As we look skyward this June...we might pause for a moment to remember the hundreds of men who watched the exact same spectacle some 250 years ago." (8)

For further information about the transit, see the TransitofVenus.org website.

WARNING: Please remember, if you are interested in the transit:

"Never look at the sun directly, even when something exciting is happening, such as an eclipse. Doing so can cause irreversible damage to your eyesight and even lead to blindness. Several studies also suggest that sunlight exposure is a risk  factor for cataracts." (9)

Huw Smith, a regular reader of Show Me Something Interesting, went to see Gerald Barry's new opera, The Importance of Being Earnest, at the Barbican, and kindly penned a review for the blog. So, without further ado, here are his musings.

The Importance of Being Ernest - the opera by Gerald Barry

Of all the plays to choose!  How do you make the dialogue count, convey the verbal sparring, and retain the sparkling wit…how? You DON’T!

This isn’t entirely true, but Barry shreds, and I mean shreds the text. How much is discarded…two thirds? Well that’s pretty standard for an adaptation and no bad thing if you’re writing an opera. And in the end isn’t it the music that counts? Isn’t it?

The text is ravaged, cut to pieces, and reduced to its brutal essentials. Barry puts the wild in Wilde or perhaps reveals the wild in Wilde and his well made play, that is if you could decipher the sung text. Yes, there were surtitles but having arrived at the hall without the correct glasses, I gave up attempting to read them and concluded it was far more fun without them. The words were there - (sung very fast, very slow, words dissected, phrases sung across the natural rhythms) - but once you surrendered to the sound and simply accepted what little meaning you could catch, you relaxed, sighed, and enjoyed the ride (and when was the last time you could say that of a contemporary opera?).

Fun? Did I say ‘fun’? A contemporary opera that’s ‘fun’? Well yes astounding though it may seem, it’s an absolute hoot both funny and exhilarating and without conceit though somehow lavished with it. So, what is it that makes Barry’s Importance… something to be revisited? Well for a start its sheer energy and exuberance and scatter-gun approach – there’s little time to grow bored with one thing as along comes the next and the next.

Did I say scatter-gun?

A highlight was the verbal exchange between Gwendolen and Cecily; an exchange conducted by megaphones, which intensified via scoring for how many smashed dinner plates?(48?), (in strict time), to scoring for jackboots and duel by pistols. Perhaps you had to be there.

I leant forward in my seat.

I rarely lean forward and only when the entertainment reaches out and sucks me in. I was sucked in and totally, completely, irrevocably, won over by Mr. Barry. I must admit that I’d admired his Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, but this, this was altogether a far more even-flavoured soup; and nothing less than an avant-garde-ist soup at that of ‘twenties London, Paris, Berlin and Moscow …and probably of Buenos Aires too thrown in for good measure. Barry mentions the fake surrealism he uses at the start but frankly it’s a kitchen sink assemblage of every musical "ism"of the twentieth-century you’ve ever heard and probably some you haven’t with a little G. & S. pattering for good measure. I loved it.

Special mention to Thomas Ades who’s conducting was a masterclass in controlled intensity; it kept drawing me from the rest of the performance but then there were so many things to savour – the opera needs to be experienced more than once.

The different parts of the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (three cheers for smaller orchestras) also seemed to revel in having something challenging to work with as did the singers who were to a man equally committed and I believe won over by the writing, fiendish though it must have been at times. In particular Peter Tantsits’ barely contained punk-ish mania and the stratospheric zapping by Barbara Hannigan.

Barry’s subversive cross-cutting decimation of the text became an added orchestral textural flourish - can I be championing this mashing syncopation? Oh yes I can. Barry’s Importance… simply uses Wilde’s sublime Importance… to create a reassuringly old fashioned musical revolution of an entertainment. There was nothing new here but how refreshing the result. I left with a smile on my face and not the fixed one I expected to be wearing as I exited the Barbican Hall.

Too late now to hear it in the concert hall. See if you can catch it on iPlayer, Radio 3, and write to ENO demanding that it be given a run sooner rather than later.

© Huw Smith 2012

So, that was Huw's take on the opera. Take a look at the Barbican brochure, and have a listen to Stephen Fry, Fiona Shaw, Thomas Adès and Gerald Barry discussing the work in the video below (thank you to the Barbican for uploading it!) if his review has sparked your interest.

The Rosenblatt Recitals series will be moving to a new home for the 2112-13 season: London's prestigious Wigmore Hall. John Gilhoody, Director of the Wigmore Hall, said that As a distinguished operatic series, [the Rosenblatt Recitals] will sit very well alongside the Hall’s own-promoted Art Song Recitals Series, and both will complement each other over the years ahead." Ian Rosenblatt, founder of the series, said that he was: "thrilled that the singers that Rosenblatt Recitals will be presenting will have a chance to perform at this iconic venue"

And who will be kicking of the new season? None other than American Tenor Lawrence Brownlee! Known for his stunning renditions of many difficult, high tenor arias, Brownlee wowed the Rosenblatt audience with his London recital debut in 2010. Also in the new season will be the fantastic Italian bass Alex Esposito, who performed so brilliantly in the role of Leporello in the ROH production of Don Giovanni with Erwin Schrott. Look out also for Greek soprano Dimitra Theodossiou, and Sicilian tenor Ivan Magrì. The full recital list can be seen here.

Oh, and by the way, there are still tickes available for Peruvian tenor, Juan Diego Flórez's recital at the Albert Hall on Tuesday!

Today is the birthday of the great Polish Contralto, Ewa Podles. She is known for having a voice frequently referred to as a “force of nature, ” for giving committed and intense performances, and for having a monster, fully functional three octave range. She has performed roles from Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia and Cenerentola, through baroque mainstays such are Handel’s Giulio Cesare, and Rinaldo, to Strauss’ Klytemnestra, Wagner’s Erda and Verdi’s Ulrica. She still hides a secret, though: “all my life I wanted to sing Tosca!” she jokingly told Marina Romani in an interview for MusicalCriticism.com. (1)

Podles is credited as being a “true contralto” and as the leading contralto of our age. Her giant sound can fill the largest of halls, or fire up and down the trickiest Baroque cadenza, and her frequent outings in trouser roles are significantly assisted by her chest voice, which produces a sound “more manly than one hears from any countertenor” (2) Indeed, she is one of the few female singers today that can authentically perform Mussorgsky's "Songs and Dances of Death", more commonly performed by basses such as Christoff and Kipnis, as the powerful chest voice required is not something usually found in female singers (3).

But where did this prodigious voice come from? “My voice comes from my mother, who is also a true contralto” (4) Podles told Joel Kasow of CultureKiosk.com. She too had a “baritone-like voice” but “also sang Rosina as she had the high notes.” (5) Just like her mother before, teachers and critics alike found it difficult to understand her voice. Luckily, she had the confidence speak out when something felt wrong. To one of her teachers, she said: “Just let me sing in my way” when trying to produce her high notes. The results were “fantastic.” (6) Given she is one of the few singers that can sing while suffering from flu, cold or fever, Podles is obviously doing something right!

In an interview with Kazik Jedrzejczak on YouTube, Podles makes an interesting distinction between the “heavy” sound of the alto voice, and the soprano-like extension and flexibility of the contralto: “I think people very often make [a] mistake because they think that contralto is…lower than alto. It’s not true! Alto, like…for example, Marian Anderson…it is a pretty short voice, with a beautiful low register, low timbre, very dark, and not that much in the high register.” (7) Whereas a contralto, she tells Joel Kasow of CultureKiosk.com ,“must have a range of more than three octaves, high notes like a soprano, low notes like a real alto, as well as the technique to sing coloratura.” (8)

One of the criticisms levelled at her is that the register breaks in her voice are quite pronounced, with a distinct light, high coloratura, a smoky, covered middle, and a powerful, masculine chest register. Given that Callas, Butt, Suliotis and others all had trademark gear changes which wowed their audiences, perhaps critics should be a little less prissy in their analysis of a voice which, after years of use, suffers no ill effects and which still has three octaves at its disposal. Podles herself says: “if I sing with three voices, it's because it is impossible to sing over three octaves with the same voice - you can't sing a high C the same way you sing the low C three octaves down.” (9)

You can hear Podles’ three octave range in this wonderful video put together by BZBlaner.

Podles’ voice has changed over time. While she “was born with” her amazing range and agility, the timbre of the voice matured over the years: “after the birth of my daughter, my voice began to darken, to grow. I couldn't sing Eboli in my early years, but now I can.” (10) The lightness of her voice in the early years, and her focus on Rossini and Baroque, lead her to say that she “was all coloratura when I sang Rosina…'Now I have the voice to sing Boris Godunov – Boris of course!” (11) 

In the video below, you can hear an early Podles singing “Nacqui all'affanno” from Rossini’s Cenerentola. You can hear how light the middle and head registers are, and how different they sound to the mature Podles. The only similarity is in the notes below the stave, particularly those below C4, such as the stunning runs down to G3. Contrast this with the video below that, with an older Podles singing Ulrica’s “Re Dell'Abisso” from Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera. The whole voice has taken on the dark weighty quality found only in the lower register, while the phenomenal G3 at the end is now truly baritonal in quality.

Now it’s time for an example from either end of Podles’ range. First, the D6. Most of the D6’s produced by Podles are in Baroque pitch (A = 415 hz) and is thus a C#6. The D6 in “Sudò il guerriero” from Haydn’s Il Ritorno di Tobia is, however, at modern pitch (A = 440 hz), and is thus a true D6. This can be seen in the video below. The lower end of the scale is evidenced in her extended descending ornament, which reaches a Bb3, in “Pour une femme de mon nom” from Donizetti’s La Fille du Regiment. This can be seen in the video underneath the Haydn piece.

I would like to end this homage to Ewa Podles with two of my favourite performances. The first is her rendition of Erda’s warning from Wagner’s Das Rheingold. Never have I heard anyone come close to the power and majesty of Erda, the spirit of the Earth, than Madame Podles. The second piece is from Handel’s Ariodante: the fierce “Dover, giustizia, amor.” I defy anyone to find a more exciting version! Happy Birthday Ewa Podles: we wish you many happy returns, and many more happy years of singing!

Today is the birthday of Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. To celebrate his life and honour his work, I’ve linked a few videos below for you to have a listen to. Prokofiev composed many symphonies, concertos and sonatas, as well as ballets, such as Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella, and operas, such as War and Peace and The Love of Three Oranges. He even turned his hand to film music, such as his cantata, Ivan the Terrible, the music for which was first conceived for Sergei Eisenstein's classic film of the same name. To see a review of this cantata, with contralto Ewa Podles, conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, click here.

Prokofiev was born in 1891 in Sontsovka (now Krasne in the Donetsk Oblast of Ukraine), an isolated rural estate in the Yekaterinoslav Governorate of the Russian Empire (1). His first piano composition was realised at the age of 5, and was called “Indian Gallop”. It was in the Lydian mode, as he was “reluctant to tackle the black notes” (2). By the age of nine, he had composed his first opera: The Giant. He died aged 61 on the same day that Stalin’s death was announced, after being chronically ill for the previous eight years. Check out his Wikipedia page for more info on his life and works.

The first of the pieces I’ve posted here is his cantata for mezzo-soprano: Alexander Nevsky. Like Ivan the Terrible, Nevsky was first composed as music for another Sergei Eisenstein film. It was reworked as a cantata, and premiered on 17 May 1939, Moscow with Sergei Prokofiev himself conducting, and Valentina Gagrina taking the mezzo-soprano role. In the video below, the mezzo-soprano role is taken by the Polish Contralto Ewa Podles. The Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya is conducted by Pablo González. For the second piece, please scroll down.

The second piece had an interesting beginning. Initially composed as a Cello Concerto (Op. 58), the piece was not very well received, and subsequently received little air-time until Prokofiev heard it performed by a young cellist named Mstislav Rostropovich. Prokofiev was enthralled by Rostropovich’s interpretation, and rewrote the piece with Rostropovich in mind. The newly titled Symphony-Concerto in E minor (Op. 125) premiered on 18 February 1952, with Rostropovich taking the role of soloist. In fact, Rostropovich had helped Prokofiev with the rewrite. The four videos below are with an older Rostropovich performing the piece he premiered nearly 20 years before.

(1) Wikipedia: Sergei Prokofiev.
(2) Autobiography by Sergey Prokofiev: reprinted in Sergei Prokofiev: Soviet Diary 1927 and Other Writings. London: Faber and Faber, 1991.

Today is the centenary of the birth of Contralto Kathleen Ferrier. Kathleen was a fantastic singer, who imbued all of her performances with beauty, grace and a depth which at times was haunting. The great richness of her voiced was matched by her humility and her desire to get the job done.

Nothing illustrates this better than her last performance of Orpheus on 3 February 1953. As a result of the radiation treatment she was receiving for cancer, her left femur partially disintegrated while she was on stage. Almost immobile, she sang the remaining arias, and took her curtain calls. She died at University College Hospital on 8 October 1953.

Below are two recordings for which she was particularly well known: Blow the Wind Southerly, and Bach's Erbame Dich from the St Matthew Passion.

Check out also:

Wikipedia: Kathleen Ferrier.
The Kathleen Ferrier Society.

New research from Dutch scientists has revitalised the search for the elusive  Majorana Fermion (1). The Majorana Fermion was first predicted about 75 years  ago by Italian scientist Ettore Majorana, one of the Via Paspernera Boys - a group of scientists named after the street where their lab was located. It is an important concept, as Majorana fermions "are particles identical to their own antiparticles" (2). They behave differently to, for example, electrons and their opposite, the positron, which destroy each other on contact.

Majorana fermions, such as the proposed Neutralino (3), are thought to occur in systems involving superconductors. Leo Kouwenhoven, one of the Dutch scientists mentinoned above, said that  "Majorana Fermions can arise as quasi-particles in specially designed nanoscale, electronic devices." (4) In their experiments, "indium antimonide nanowires are connected to a circuit with a gold contact at one end and a slice of superconductor at the other, and then exposed to a moderately strong magnetic field." (5) When analysing the measurements of the electrical conductance of the nanowires, there were peaks "at zero voltage that is consistent with the formation of a pair of Majorana particles." (6)

The importance of the Majorana Fermion is in its projected use in Quantum Computers, something well in advance of the science of the day in Ettore Majorana's time. So, what became of him? Well, we don't really know the answer to the that question. He disappeared in mysterious circumstances from a ship travelling from Palermo to Naples in 1938, never to be seen again. (7) Several theories were put forward, ranging from his becoming a beggar, through being murdered by Nazi agents, to his relocation to South America. 

One of the most repeated theories, however, was that of suicide. Indeed, the following note was sent by Majorana to Antonio Carrelli, Director of the Naples Physics Institute, on 25 March 1938:

"Dear Carrelli, I made a decision that has become unavoidable. There isn’t a bit of selfishness in it, but I realize what trouble my sudden disappearance will cause you and the students. For this as well, I beg your forgiveness, but especially for betraying the trust, the sincere friendship and the sympathy you gave me over the past months. I ask you to remind me to all those I learned to know and appreciate in your Institute, especially Sciuti: I will keep a fond memory of them all at least until 11 pm tonight, possibly later too. E. Majorana."

However, Majorana contradicted this seemingly suicidal state of mind in a telegram to Carelli a couple of days later. Also, on 23 March, Majorana had withdrawn all the funds from his bank account - not the action of a suicidal man, some might say. Still, Majorana has left us with some outstanding works in the realm of theoretical physics which still have relevance to this day. Perhaps it is a fitting legacy that the elusive Majorana Fermion, as elusive as Majorana himself, might now possibly have been discovered.

(1) BBC News - Science and Environment: Majorana particle glimpsed in lab.
(2) Signatures of Majorana Fermions in Hybrid Superconductor-Semiconductor Nanowire Devices. V. Mourik, K. Zuo, S. M. Frolov, S. R. Plissard, E. P. A. M. Bakkers, L. P. Kouwenhoven.
(3) Wikipedia: Neutralino.
(4) Bulletin of the American Physical Society. Abstract: D44.00003: The Search for Majorana Fermions in Semiconductor Nanowires. Leo Kouwenhoven.
(5) Nature: Quest for quirky quantum particles may have struck gold.
(6) Ibid.
(7) The Mysterious Disappearance of Ettore Majorana. Barry R. Holstein.

Praskovia Saltykova was the mother of Empress Regnant Anna Ivanovna, and wife of the titular Tsar Ivan V (co-Tsar with Peter the Great). She was a formidible woman, known both for her great charity towards waifs and strays, and her formidible temper.

One of her temper tantrums, aimed at a steward she had dismissed, was related thus in A Forgotten Empress by Mina Kirstein Curtiss: "The man had attempted to avange himself by presenting to the Tsar [Peter] a note Praskovya had written in cipher, which the steward hoped might reveal treason on her part. Outraged by the false implications of the plot, she considered the man's mere imprisonment by the secret police as insufficent punishment. On the pretext of distributing alms, she obtained entrance to his prison cell, where, with threats and curses, she beat him over the head with the cane which here severe gout necessitated her carrying. Growing angrier with each blow, she ordered her servants to burn his head and face with a candle, and finally sent for a bottle of vodka, had it poured over his head and set on fire."

Luckily for the steward, the "horrified" jailors managed to get the dowager Empress to leave before she did any more damage!