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Although the idea of atoms originated in ancient Greece, it remained just
that, an idea, until 19th and 20th-century research proved that atoms were real
and, moreover, divisible. The interval was filled with intellectual debate, with
religion a principal ingredient. Bernard Pullman’s The Atom in the History of
Human Thought is a staggeringly comprehensive survey of that progress, from the
age of Leucippus to that of Heisenberg and Feynman. Like marriage, tackling this
book is an enterprise not to be entered into lightly. Published by Oxford
University Press, $32.50, ISBN 0195114477.