The Fly in the Cathedral: How a Group of Cambridge Scientists
Won the International Race to Split the Atom By Brian Cathcart.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 308 pages. $25. This newspaper you're
holding in your hands -- and your hands, for that matter -- are
composed of atoms. For centuries, there was thought to be
nothing smaller. The word itself derives from the Greek atomos,
which means indivisible. Then, in 1897, British physicist J.J.
Thompson of Cambridge University made the startling discovery
that atoms were not indivisible but composed of even tinier
particles that he dubbed electrons. Scientific hell broke loose.
Researchers around the world wondered: What other secrets is the
atom hiding? In The Fly in the Cathedral, Brian Cathcart
recounts the fascinating early history of the physicists who
pried loose these secrets. At the heart of his book is the
mostly forgotten story of John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, two
young Cambridge University physicists who in 1932 won the global
race to "split" the atom a