Talk:antimatter

First Use or Coinage of the term

There is discussion on Wikipedia about who coined this word. The OED records the first usages of "anti-matter" in 1953 (in the NY Times on October 23rd, and slightly earlier in "Sci. News Let." on March 14th). This was a logical development from Dirac's 1931 usage of "anti-electron". However, some sources attribute the term to Sir Arthur Schuster. In his letters (Nature, 58, 367 (18 August 1898) Schuster uses the term "Potential matter" and in another letter in the same year he seems to have credited the term "negative matter" to Karl Pearson. I can find no example of the use of "anti-matter" before the 1953 OED examples. Dbfirs 08:38, 3 October 2009 (UTC)