The First particle Physicist

This chapter involves an explanation (history lesson) of how Democritus' theory has evolved into the scientific discovery of his a-tom.

Lederman goes about his explanation in an interesting way. He talks about a dream where he meets Democritus at Fermilab (a particle accelerator located in Batavia, Illinois). Democritus has been travelling through time in search of his a-tom's discovery. Democritus talks to him about how theory has evolved since his time (450B.C.).

Some of these theories had never even been brought to my attention before. I never knew that the train of thought worked in such a way back in the day. Theories ranging from that of the "first" Greek philosopher Thales (600B.C.), such that water is the primary element (all is made from water), to that of Neils Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and Max Born, who believed that chance determined nature's way.

I think that the most interesting theory he descibed was that of Leucippus. Democritus (Lederman's dream) talks about how Leucippus was all wrapped up and tangled in his theories. How he was trying to define the empty space in which we could put our atoms. He could not define it, however, because he thought that if space is empty, it is nothing, and he did not think that it was possible to define nothing.

Nowadays, we know this "nothing" as a vacuum. Another concept that is difficult to grasp at first, but is extremely important in the eveloution of scientific exploration.