Void

This engaging account shows nothing is in fact something and that nothing really matters; as one reviewer put it, empty space is full and absence has structure. This is all about the physics of not stuff rather than stuff, and relates the history of the physics of nothing from the 17th-century through to Maxwell, Einstein, the quantum vacuum and string theory. It shows how basic concepts have to be completely rethought as physics advances, but also gives an insight into the characters involved and their relationships, for instance Newton and Leibniz, Einstein and his professors, and the temperament of Dirac.