Proceedings

EPJ H Highlight - How theoretical particle physicists made history with the Standard Model

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Luciano Maiani, Pucci de Stefano, and their child Camilla at the Theory Division picnic, CERN 1985.

The personal recollections of a physicist involved in developing a reference model in particle physics, called the Standard Model, particularly in Italy

Understanding the Universe requires first understanding its building blocks, a field covered by particle physics. Over the years, an elegant model of particle physics, dubbed the Standard Model, has emerged as the main point of reference for describing the fundamental components of matter and their interactions. The Standard Model is not confined to particle physics; it also provides us a guide to understanding phenomena that take place in the Universe at large, down to the first moments of the Big Bang, and it sets the stage for a novel cosmic problem, namely the identification of dark matter. Placing the Standard Model in a historical context sheds valuable light on how the theory came to be. In a remarkable paper published in EPJ H, Luciano Maiani from the University of Rome and the National Institute of Nuclear Physics, Italy, shares his personal recollections with Luisa Bonolis from the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany. During an interview recorded over several days in March 2016, Maiani outlines the role of those researchers who were instrumental in the evolution of theoretical particle physics in the years when the Standard Theory was developed.

The paper also features, in the background, the remarkable development of Italian particle physics in the second half of the 20th century. It refers in particular to the role of great scientific personalities, e.g. Bruno Touschek, the Austrian physicist who proposed and built the first electron-positron collider in the early sixties, and Raoul Gatto, an Italian theoretical physicist known for his work on the symmetries of subnuclear particles. Maiani also shares his memories of Nicola Cabibbo. In a fundamental work written while working at the Particle Physics Laboratory, CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, Cabibbo unraveled the mystery of the weak decays of strange particles, a solution at the basis of the unified theories and at the heart of the Standard Theory.

Lastly, Maiani recounts the co-discovery of the GIM mechanism with Sheldon Glashow and John Iliopoulos in 1970. They proposed a fourth kind of quark—namely the charm quark, which would be discovered a few years later—that ultimately provided a solid basis for the unification of the weak and electromagnetic interactions of quarks and leptons .

“The Charm of Theoretical Physics (1958-1993)” Oral History Interview by L. Maiani and L. Bonolis (2017), European Physical Journal H, DOI 10.1140/epjh/e2017-80040-9

This was our first experience of publishing with EPJ Web of Conferences. We contacted the publisher in the middle of September, just one month prior to the Conference, but everything went through smoothly. We have had published MNPS Proceedings with different publishers in the past, and would like to tell that the EPJ Web of Conferences team was probably the best, very quick, helpful and interactive. Typically, we were getting responses from EPJ Web of Conferences team within less than an hour and have had help at every production stage.
We are very thankful to Solange Guenot, Web of Conferences Publishing Editor, and Isabelle Houlbert, Web of Conferences Production Editor, for their support. These ladies are top-level professionals, who made a great contribution to the success of this issue. We are fully satisfied with the publication of the Conference Proceedings and are looking forward to further cooperation. The publication was very fast, easy and of high quality. My colleagues and I strongly recommend EPJ Web of Conferences to anyone, who is interested in quick high-quality publication of conference proceedings.

On behalf of the Organizing and Program Committees and Editorial Team of MNPS-2019, Dr. Alexey B. Nadykto, Moscow State Technological University “STANKIN”, Moscow, Russia. EPJ Web of Conferences vol. 224 (2019)

ISSN: 2100-014X (Electronic Edition)

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