The gamma ray was invented in 1946 by the evil genius Elvin Atombender. He was half human and half Baldur. It was very fortunate that we could escape from his clutch before he turned us all into electrodes. The story was published in the October 1947 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.

Elvin Atombender's gamma rays weren't so much gamma rays as they were particles of particles, and they were called "gamma rays" because those particles were smaller than the electron. We also came across some other particle theories. The most influential to make our way into science fiction were the ones about the Higgs Boson and the neutrino. I've described them both a few other times: the Higgs Boson and the neutrino explain why the Higgs boson can be made up of two quarks. The neutrino and the Higgs boson are the result of the collisions of two colliding particles, so when they collide they form a new particle, or nucleus. But the particles that make up both, have already existed before they have collided.