The Making of the Atomic Bomb: 25th Anniversary Edition

by Richard Rhodes

Plausibility and scientific value measured an idea’s quality by the standards of orthodoxy; originality measured the quality of its dissent. Polanyi’s model of an open republic of science where each scientist judges the work of his peers against mutually agreed upon and mutually supported standards explains why the atom found such precarious lodging in nineteenth-century physics. It was plausible; it had considerable scientific value, especially in systematic importance; but no one had yet made any surprising discoveries about it. None, at least, sufficient to convince the network of only about one thousand men and women throughout the world in 1895 who called themselves physicists and the larger, associated network of chemists.110 The atom’s time was at hand. The great surprises in basic science in the nineteenth century came in chemistry. The great surprises in basic science in the first half of the twentieth century would come in physics.