The Matter of Everything: How Curiosity, Physics and Improbable Experiments Changed the World, by Suzie Sheehy

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'The Matter of Everything' by Suzie Sheehy

As the 19th century drew to an end, scientists assumed that they knew it all. With unwarranted arrogance, they held that virtually nothing was left to discover. For them, matter was composed of atoms, “tiny spherical Lego pieces,” Suzie Sheehy writes, forming the building blocks of a universe held together by gravity and magnetism. And then a German scientist, Wilhelm Röntgen, identified X-rays. While the medical application was obvious, his discovery also led Britain’s J.J. Thomson to raise new questions about matter and light whose answers transformed physics—and civilization—in the 20th century.

Thomson discovered the electron, but Sheehy quickly adds that Thomas Edison also stumbled upon the phenomenon while inventing the lightbulb. “Rather than exploring the detailed physics of the light bulbs, Edison’s team simply tried as many materials and configurations as possible, a kind of ‘cut-and-try’ brute force tactic,” she writes. Edison didn’t realize (and probably didn’t care) that the filaments in his bulbs were emitting electrons. He was trying to harness electricity; Thomson gave rise to electronics.

Sheehan is a physicist with a gift for writing with grace and clarity. In The Matter of Everything, she tells the story of knowledge built on knowledge leading to discoveries with unanticipated outcomes. Because of Röntgen’s discovery, X-Ray imaging of products (“non-destructive testing”) keeps pipes from bursting and planes from falling from the sky. Advanced electronics enabled a revolution in health care through CT scans, developed by Britain’s Godfrey Hounsfield at EMI (Electrical and Musical Industries), a U.K. corporation better known in some circles for signing The Sex Pistols.