The Disappearance and Reappearance of Ettore Majorana.

“The test of a first-rate system is the ability to hold two opposed states at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

—after F. Scott Fitzgerald, who did not know he was intuiting a principle later required by quantum physics

“The *Great Gatsby* was rediscovered when the Army printed it small and handed it out to G.I.’s,” Fitzgerald says. “Your theorems, Ettore, waited for laboratories and liquid helium. Talent creates the work; timing decides when it’s seen.”

The Council draws attention to Ettore Majorana, a Sicilian physicist—yes, Sicilian, we checked twice—who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1938 and may now be reappearing, conceptually and mathematically, inside a new quantum computing chip developed by Microsoft. We note this with restrained pride and only minimal gesturing.

The Newest Leap in Quantum Computing: The Majorana 1

A brief aside for those still warming up: a qubit is the basic unit of a quantum computer. Unlike an ordinary bit, which must be either 0 or 1, a qubit can exist as 0, 1, or both at once. This is powerful, but unstable. Most qubits behave like divas: extremely talented, easily disturbed, and constantly in need of supervision. This fragility is the central problem the field has been trying to solve. If that problem is solved, quantum computers could shift from laboratory curiosities to machines able to model molecules, materials, and systems that overwhelm even the best classical computers.

Majorana’s contribution went beyond a clever idea. In 1937, he developed precise mathematical formulations describing particles that are their own antiparticles—solutions to quantum equations that are real rather than paired opposites. In other words, states that hold their opposites without collapsing, echoing F. Scott Fitzgerald’s observation that a first-rate intelligence can hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still function. Those equations now guide how engineers design and manipulate so-called Majorana states in superconducting systems. The chip attempts to use this mathematics to create qubits whose information is stored non-locally, spread across the system’s structure, making it far harder to disrupt. Less drama. Fewer collapses. More actual computing.

The Council notes that a system which works by containing its own opposite intersects neatly with its own behavior and philosophy. We have long argued that contradiction need not be resolved to be useful, that paradox can be load-bearing, and that stability sometimes comes from refusing to split cleanly in two. Majorana vanished, returned as equations, and now helps build machines that function precisely because they embody that refusal.

Ettore Majorana is a name worth remembering—not just because it may become familiar, but because it reminds us that some of the most durable structures are built by people who never stayed around to explain themselves.

—Eugene Bodeswell, Council-of-Concerned-Conservationist Ethnographer