Physics has much to tell: success and failure, hope and disappointment. The author narrates the stories of the personalities who shaped it, in the context of their time. The common thread is woven by ideas, intertwined with multifaceted events and the exciting biographies of their inventors. From Newton, Galileo, and Huygens to Einstein, Feynman, Fermi, and Bohr. From the beginnings to the question of the nature of space and time, from Faraday and Maxwell to Schrödinger, Dirac, Heisenberg, and Pauli. From the atom to quantum mechanics, from the first observations of the night sky to the discoveries of modern astronomy and cosmology.