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Sicily and the development of Econophysics: the pioneering work of Ettore Majorana and the Econophysics Workshop in Palermo

Sicily has played an important role in the development of the new research area named "Econophysics". In fact some key ideas supporting this new hybrid discipline were originally formulated in a pioneering work of the Sicilian born physicist Ettore Majorana. The article he wrote was entitled "The value of statistical laws in physics and social sciences". I will discuss its origin and history that has been recently discovered in the study of Stefano Roncoroni. This recent study documents the true reasons and motivations that triggered the pioneering work of Majorana. It also shows that the description of this work provided by Edoardo Amaldi was shallow and misleading. In the second part of the talk I will recollect the first years of development of econophysics and in particular the role of the "International Workshop on Econophysics and Statistical Finance" held in Palermo on 28-30 September 1998 and the setting in 1999 of the "Observatory of Complex Systems" the research group on Econophysics of Palermo University and Istituto Nazionale di Fisica della Materia.