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Ernest Rutherford and the birth of modern physics
Join Ernest Rutherford in a journey through the most spectacular scientific revolution in the history of the world.
“Wright manages to balance the indisputable genius of Ernest Rutherford with the context of the people, collaborations and competitions that enabled the great discoveries we associate with him and his ilk. We get to fully celebrate the melding of many minds, and contributions building up to the moments of clarity that advanced the world into the modern understanding of matter.”
– Benjamin Dickson, ‘New Zealand Science Review’, Vol. 80, 2025.
“….a compelling, accessible account of one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century…a portrait that is both scientifically rigorous and deeply human.”
-Anthony Llewellyn-Evans, Good Reading Magazine, November 2025
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This book is a must-read that explores how Lord Rutherford’s work from the late 1890s onwards – both hands-on and as director of the high-powered research teams he led – reset the basis by which we understand physics and chemistry, discovering one of the fundamental structures of the universe and establishing the principles behind much of today’s technology .
Available worldwide.
Science. History. Analysis.
“Wright is a fantastic writer… in my opinion the best New Zealand historian writing today”
– ‘The Library’ 3 February 2015.
Books in print
Matthew Wright’s in-print books are available from any good bookstore, Amazon and online.
Out of print books
Limited stocks available by direct order for some titles. Get them before they’re gone.
Professional services
Professional writing, editorial and publishing services. Corporate work and rates only.
Latest book
The History of Hawke’s Bay – third edition
This third edition of Matthew Wright’s history of Hawke’s Bay is fully updated in full colour. Includes previously unseen colour photos. Available from any good New Zealand bookshop or by order..
Latest feature article
Thought-provoking analysis.
Matthew Wright’s latest feature article explores the way Britain co-opted its physics community during the First World War.
Buy Matthew Wright’s books
“Wright has profound knowledge of his subject and uses lucid prose to convey it”
Fritz Logan, Timaru Herald
About
A professional career
Matthew Wright is an internationally published and multi-award-winning New Zealand author. He has qualifications in history and the sciences, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society at University College in London, to which he was elected on merit of his scholarship at global level. He studied post-graduate under Professor Peter Munz.
Wright has more than 40 years professional experience as an author and editor. His publications include 65 books and more than 650 academic papers, feature articles and literary reviews. His books have been used as university texts, notably his scholarly historiographical analysis of the Treaty of Waitangi and its social place in New Zealand.
Other highlights of Wright’s work include his mammoth one-volume history of New Zealand, which has been in print since 2004; an analysis of the New Zealand Company’s experiment in social idealism; a biography of Sir Donald McLean; and books covering the science and history of New Zealand’s earthquakes. He has been primarily published by Penguin Random House, Oratia Books and Bateman Books.
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