A history of the twentieth-century physics revolution and its protagonists in search of the fundamental components of matter.
In its relentless investigation of the fundamental units that make up the world around us, physics has pushed into ever smaller regions of matter. From atoms to elementary particles, down to the ineffable quarks, we have disengaged from the sure references of immediate intuition and abandoned the support of established philosophical categories. The visible, broken down into its elementary constituents, became invisible and for that reason, paradoxically, comprehensible. The physics revolution of the twentieth century was thus also a philosophical revolution, argues Giuseppe Bruzzaniti, who takes us on a journey in search of the somewhat peculiar “eyes” through which scientists have constructed some of the most significant images of matter.

Giuseppe Bruzzaniti holds a degree in physics and specializes in the history of science. He teaches mathematics and physics, works on the history of nuclear physics and has written several essays, including Dal segno al nucleo. Saggio sulle origini della fisica nucleare (Bollati Boringhieri, 1993), Enrico Fermi. Il genio obbediente (Einaudi, 2007), and A cosa serve la matematica. Finalmente ho capito (Vallardi, 2017, with Ugo Bruzzo).