The smell of books mixes with dust from the chalk used on the blackboards. Ida knows that the library on Panisperna Street is a special place. Since she started working there, her life has changed. In these classrooms, secretly listening to lectures by leading physicists, she tasted independence and freedom—something that women in Italy in the 1930s were not used to. There she met the scientist Ettore Majorana, with whom she became friends. There she met Alberto and experienced the greatest love of her life. But suddenly everything changes. Her father has chosen a husband for her, and she has no choice but to hide her secret, suffering from guilt. Meanwhile, the group of young physicists falls apart, and Majorana mysteriously disappears.
Many years have passed since then, and Ida is now a grown woman. But it is the past that her mind clings to now, as the world seems to be collapsing before her eyes. The only solution is to return to the time when she was happy. To return, hoping that Majorana did not die, but simply decided to change his life—perhaps because his scientific research became dangerous.
Barbara Bellomo returns to her beloved readers with a novel that reveals the mystery of Ettore Majorana's disappearance. But above all, the novel recreates the atmosphere of the institute on Panisperna Street, where young Italian scientists made outstanding discoveries in the field of nuclear physics. "The Library of Missing Physicists" is the story of a woman and her quest for redemption. A story of secrets, love, forgiveness, and hope.