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| Preface | |
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| Introduction | |
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| The physicists' world in 1895 | |
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| New horizons | |
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| Pieter Zeeman | |
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| Joseph John Thomson | |
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| Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen | |
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| H. Becquerel, the Curies, and the Discovery of Radioactivity | |
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| Becquerel's "predestined" discovery | |
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| The Curies and a great leap forward | |
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| Rutherford in the New World: The Transmutation of Elements | |
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| Rutherford's early career | |
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| Investigations in radioactivity | |
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| Disciples and the discovery of transmutation | |
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| Planck, Unwilling Revolutionary: The Idea of Quantization | |
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| The theoretical pillars of physics. An encompassing problem: the blackbody | |
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| Max Planck | |
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| Einstein-New Ways of Thinking: Space, Time, Relativity, and Quanta | |
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| An unconventional youth | |
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| Relativity | |
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| Grains of light and molecular hits | |
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| From patent office to world fame | |
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| The world order collapses and space is curved | |
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| The later years and Einstein's solitude | |
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| Sir Ernest and Lord Rutherford of Nelson | |
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| Back to England | |
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| New light on alpha particles | |
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| The atomic nucleus | |
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| The planetary atom | |
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| Same but different: the concept of isotopism | |
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| The disintegration of the nucleus | |
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| Director of the Cavendish Laboratory | |
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| Bohr and Atomic Models | |
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| The young Bohr and the hydrogen atom | |
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| X-rays come into their own | |
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| The quantized atom established | |
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| Weimar and Copenhagen physics | |
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| The exclusion principle | |
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| A True Quantum Mechanics at Last | |
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| Louis de Broglie: matter waves | |
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| Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli: magic matrices | |
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| Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac: abstraction and mathematical beauty | |
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| Erwin Schrodinger | |
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| The meaning of the equations | |
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| A new look at reality: complementarity | |
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| Mysteries explained, but doubts remain | |
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| The Wonder Year 1932: Neutron, Positron, Deuterium, and Other Discoveries | |
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| The discovery of the neutron | |
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| The discovery of deuterium | |
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| The positron. The new nuclear physics | |
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| Enrico Fermi and Nuclear Energy | |
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| Discoveries at Rome | |
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| The discovery of fission | |
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| The steps to the atomic bomb | |
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| Transuranic elements | |
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| Physics mobilized | |
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| Consequences of the bomb | |
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| Fermi's final work | |
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| E. O. Lawrence and Particle Accelerators | |
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| Large-scale physics | |
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| The first accelerators | |
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| Lawrence and the cyclotron | |
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| Policies and personalities | |
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| Racing for ever-higher energies | |
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| Beyond the Nucleus | |
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| The elementary particles | |
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| The new science in Japan | |
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| Discovery of the pion | |
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| A horde of new particles | |
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| Antinucleons | |
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| The downfall of parity | |
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| The bubble chamber | |
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| Order in the wilderness | |
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| New Branches from the Old Stump | |
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| Quantum electrodynamics | |
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| Laser and maser | |
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| Nuclear physics | |
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| The Mossbauer effect | |
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| Superconductivity | |
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| Other macroscopic quantum effects | |
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| At the boundaries of physics: astrophysics, biology | |
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| The perplexed scientist | |
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| Conclusions | |
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| Future trends | |
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| The innards of physics | |
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| Appendixes | |
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| Stefan's law. Wien's law | |
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| Planck's hunt for the blackbody radiation formula | |
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| Einstein's heuristic argument for postulating the existence of light quanta | |
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| Brownian motion | |
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| Blackbody energy fluctuations according to Einstein | |
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| Specific heat of solids according to Einstein | |
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| A and B of Einstein | |
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| J. J. Thomson's parabola method for finding elm of ions | |
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| Bohr's hydrogen atom | |
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| Quantum mechanics in a nutshell | |
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| Bibliography | |
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| Name Index | |
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| Subject Index | |