This is a book review of The Elephant in the Universe: Our Our Hundred-Year Search for Dark Matter by Govert Schilling.
The Elephant in the Universe: Our Hundred-Year Search for Dark Matter, by Govert Schilling (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press), 2022. Pp. 376, 21.5 × 14.5 cm. Preis £ 23.95 (hardbound, ISBN 978 0 674 24899 1).
This is an English-language book (not a translation) by a well-known Dutch popular-science writer (who even has an asteroid named after him). As Peebles wrote, there are several kinds of dark matter: the "the astronomers' subluminal matter", "the particle physicists' nonbaryonic matter" and "the cosmologists' dark matter"; this book covers them all, but without making the distinction so explicit. The twenty-five main chapters are divided into three parts which roughly reflect the different types of dark matter mentioned above. While this is a book mainly about science, many scientists are mentioned by name, several of whom were also interviewed for the book, and for a score or so there are capsule biographies. He mentions more names than in most popular-science descriptions of the history of dark matter, his description of the saga starting with a century-old paper by Kapteyn. As with the traditional dark-matter topics with the page count roughly reflecting the size of the corresponding community, supporters of MOND and similar alternatives to (some kinds of) dark matter also get a voice. Schilling thus covers a lot of material, but the twenty-five chapters structure it well and one doesn't lose sight of the forest for the trees. Perhaps because Schilling is primarily a journalist (though self-taught both in that field and in astronomy), his book is balanced, rather than presenting a more or less thinly disguised plea for one's own point of view, as is the case with some popular-science writers who work in the field in question. His impartiality is one reason to recommend the book. All in all, it is a non-technical, historical, personal, up-to-date, correct, balanced, well-written, and well-researched book.