The discovery in 1983 of the intermediate bosons W and Z, the carriers of
the weak interaction, in experiments at
the CERN laboratory in Geneva climaxed a
fifty-year saga. The long path led from
Fermi's early description of nuclear beta decay through the evolution of
the universal V-A interaction and on to the
development of gauge theories of the
fundamental interactions. In search of the intermediate boson,
experimentalists developed powerful new techniques and opened new fields,
including high-energy neutrino scattering and the study of leptons
produced in proton-proton collisions. These in turn helped lead to the
discovery of neutral weak currents and of charm, which themselves
became essential elements of the "standard model" of weak and
electromagnetic interactions.
The ultimate discovery required the adventurous conversion of CERN's Super
Proton Synchrotron into a storage ring in which counter-rotating beams of
protons and antiprotons collide at high energies,
and the mounting of large and intricate experimental devices, involving
hundreds of physicists, engineers, and technicians. The CERN
discoveries earned the 1984 Nobel Prize for Carlo Rubbia, the animator of
the enterprise and leader of the UA-1 collaboration, and for
Simon van der Meer, whose accelerator artistry made high-energy collisions of
protons and antiprotons a reality.
Christine Sutton, an editor of the British journal New Scientist and
herself trained in experimental particle physics has given an accessible
account of the logic of modern physics and the discovery of the
intermediate bosons. Her book is not the definitive history of elther,
however. Physicists will find Sutton's intellectual history of the subject
slightly
annoying, because its smoothness loses some of the drama of our past, but
the account is not seriously misleading. More regrettably, the
discussion of the CERN experiments, though breathless in tone, misses the
flesh-and-blood excitement of the chase. The book tells in straightforward
style what happened, but does not bring to life the characters involved or
reveal how research is actually done.
It is a reasonable factual introduction, but is unlikely to be found
inspirational.
Chris Quigg, Theoretical Physics, Fermi National Accelerator
Laboratory