The hope was that the periodic table would be simplified once scientists had discovered how it was put together using electrons, protons and neutrons. But these three particles turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg. Now there were over a hundred particles that seemed to make up the building blocks of matter. As Enrico Fermi admitted to a student at the time: ‘Young man, if I could remember the name of these particles, I would have been a botanist.’
