Otto Frisch took part in some of the most exciting developments of modern physics, including the discovery of nuclear fission -- he coined that term -- which led to atomic power and atomic weapons. Working on those weapons during World War II he met the scientist and organizer, Robert Oppenheimer, and the passionate maverick, Edward Teller, as well as the mathematical genius, John von Neumann, from whom he first heard about electronic computers, which were just coming into being.

He was still a child when Einstein rose to fame and when Bohr devised his atomic model, based on Rutherford's discovery of the atomic nucleus; but later he met all those great scientists (and many others) and indeed worked for five years in Copenhagen under Bohr, whom he regarded as the deepest thinker among them. By vividly describing our growing knowledge of matter and energy he creates the background for his (mostly) affectionate pen portraits, enlivened by entertaining anecdotes, of the many scientists he met.

He saw the first atom bomb explode 'like the light of a thousand suns', and later during his thirty years in Cambridge he saw the birth and growth of radioastronomy, and the unravelling of the double helix of heredity. Carefully chosen pictures -- some drawn by the author himself -- help in making the book enjoyable to scientists and non-scientists alike.