The Centre was founded by Italian physicist prof. Antonino Zichichi in 1962 in Geneva and moved in Erice the following year. Now it is hosted in Ciclope and in the former convents of Saint Dominic, Saint Francis, Saint Roch.
The ancient buildings hosting the Centre are now named after great scientists: the Saint Francis convent is now the Eugene P. Wigner Institute with the Enrico Fermi Lecture Hall; the Saint Dominic convent is now the Patrick M.S. Blackett Institute with the Paul A.M. Dirac Lecture Hall, the Paul A.M. Dirac and the Daniel Chalonge Museums; the Saint Roch convent is now the Isidor I. Rabi Institute with the Richard P. Feynman Lecture Hall, the Polo Sismico, the first worldwide network of Seismological Detectors (1981), the Directorate and the main Secretariat of the Centre and the Ciclope is now the Victor F. Weisskopf Institute with the John S. Bell and Richard H. Dalitz Lecture Halls. There are living quarters in all four institutes for people attending the courses at the Centre.
Named after Ettore Majorana, outstanding Italian physician, the Centre is now part of the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics and it finances the International School of Sub-nuclear Physics. During the Cold War scientists from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United States of America used to meet in the Ettore Majorana Centre. In these years, 76 scientists who took part in the courses were later awarded with the Nobel Prize, and 49 were already Nobel laureates.
In Erice, it was also founded the first nucleus of a new laboratory with a mandate to study the planetary emergencies, like ozone depletion or greenhouse effect, called “ILSEAT” (International Laboratory for Science Engineering and Advanced Technology). Today it also includes 123 Schools covering all fields of modern scientific research.
Contact info
Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture
Ettore Majorana Centre
Via Guarnotta, 26
I-91016 Erice, Italy
Telephone: +39 0923 869133
E-mail: hq@emcsc.ccsem.infn.it
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