I have found this book to be easy to read, which in turn makes it easier to understand the background of the men who gave us the birth of the atomic sciences. I have always been one who believes that many great discoveries are made by chance, but this book makes clear the fact that the discoverers had to have intelligence enough to interpret the meaning of the accidents they came across.
It was interesting to have first hand accounts from these scientists on their efforts to get the rest of the scientific community to realize the faults in the current theories and the correctness of the new ideas put forth.
I was also made aware of the effect of the great distances between universities in those days. I learned that students pursuing the sciences tended to stay in Europe, because of the delays of getting information from Europe to the Americas, and that students tended to travel from one university to the next, trying to find which one offered the most.
I had known that scientists tended to be stubborn about accepting new theories, but I had not been aware of the social structures that were found in Germany, where a professor was regarded as noble. This would add considerably to the difficulty of trying to get a theory accepted if such a professor did not agree with you.