The Electron - Brian Clegg *****

As a particle that has been around the lifetime of the universe and is central to electricity, chemistry and the existence of matter we owe a lot to the electron - but most of us know little about it. Brian Clegg’s biography skims over the first 13.7 or so billion years of its existence to concentrate on the period when humans have been aware of what it does and have gradually come to realise how it acts and what it is.

After some mind boggling facts about electrons, the biography starts with lightning - the most noticeable example of electrons at work before we realised they existed. Clegg takes us through fascinating historical steps in our interactions with electricity, from Franklin’s kite and The Electrical Boy to Aldini electrifying a criminal’s corpse in 1803 causing Mr Pass the Beadle to ‘die of fright soon after he returned home’.

In the mid-nineteenth century we see how the electric telegraph enabled The Times newspaper o be on the street in London 40 minutes after the announcement of the birth of Victoria’s second son in Windsor - and police in London to catch a murderer as he stepped off the train from Slough.

From the end of the nineteenth century the biography brings in the scientists who gradually began to understand the nature of electricity and the atom, discovering the essential role of the electron that would lead to electronics and more. It’s the historical detail that really makes this book - little considerations like Shelley’s sister complaining about her brother’s attempt to electrify her. But the reader also gets a picture of the way that modern physics portrays the electron. Occasionally this perhaps gets a little over technical, but the storytelling carries the reader forward.

Overall, an engaging insight into the life and work of this fundamental particle.

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Review by Peet Morris
Please note, this title is written by the editor of the Popular Science website. Our review is still an honest opinion – and we could hardly omit the book – but do want to make the connection clear.
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