Birth of a symmetry

CERN; Close, Frank

Published 2017 | Version v1

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Birth of a symmetry

1. Oxford U

Half a century ago, Steven Weinberg spent the summer at Cape Cod, working on a new theory of the strong interaction of pions. By October 1967, the idea had morphed into a theory of the weak and electromagnetic interactions, and the following month he published a paper that would revolutionise our understanding of the fundamental forces.

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vol57-issue9-p025-e.pdf md5:3cd01f31972a093919a0febd5f31fd8c	1.4 MB	Preview Download
The first page of Weinberg's 1967paper "A Model of Leptons ", published in Physical Review Letters. md5:1acf87243a67d59a877117a5d71adb31	588.3 kB	Preview Download
The cover page (top) and references (above) ofWeinberg's original manuscript, as given to HPDurr at the time of the 1967 Solvay conference, may be compared with the paper in published form. The origin of the arrow on the manuscript adjacent to reference three is unknown, but may be a reminder to complete that reference: the citations of Br out andEnglert and to "Hagen et al." (Guralnik Hagen and Kibble) have been added later, possibly following discussions at that meeting. md5:2f0f42804de1cee1b798442333b81781	386.4 kB	Preview Download
CERN has been instrumental in proving the validity of Weinberg's model ofleptons. (Left) The first evidence for the weak neutral current, recorded by the Gargamelle bubble-chamber experiment in July 1973, in which an incoming antineutrino knocks an electron forwards (towards the left) to create a characteristic electronic shower with electron-positron pairs. (Top right) Direct production for the first time of the W boson in the UA1 detector in late 1982, producing a high transverse energy electron (arrow). (Bottom right) An event display from the ATLAS experiment showing a candidate event for a Higgs boson decaying into four electrons, recorded a few weeks before the official Higgs discovery was announced on 4 July 2012. md5:45c7455ed5572c552aabe1a7e369eeba	1.3 MB	Preview Download
Weinberg in Stockholm in 1979 receiving the Nobel Prize in Physics from the king of Sweden. The prize was shared between him, Sheldon Glashow andAbdus Salam 'for their contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, including, inter alia, the prediction of the weak neutral current". md5:c8c2b5f6d3e36752b7915e200b486be0	124.1 kB	Preview Download
Weinberg at his blackboard. md5:fabc6df423b94aa2161250568ee02d69	142.4 kB	Preview Download

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Issued: 2017-11

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