Description
The riveting story of a modern age scientific feud between two Nobel Prize-winning scientists over the nature of cosmic rays and the universe.
Set in a revolutionary era of physics and science when a series of rapid-fire discoveries was upending our understanding of the universe, Splinters of Infinity by Mark Wolverton tells a little-known story: the tale of two of America’s foremost physicists, Robert Millikan (1868–1953) and Arthur Compton (1892–1962), who found themselves locked in an intense, often deeply personal, conflict about cosmic rays. Confirmed in 1912, cosmic rays—enigmatic forms of penetrating radiation—seemed to raise all new questions about the origins of the universe, but they also offered the potential to explain everything—or reveal the existence of God.
In engaging, accessible prose, Wolverton takes the reader through the twists and turns of the Millikan-Compton debate, one of the first major public exa
