Prestigious Discoveries at CERN: 1973 Neutral Currents 1983 W & Z Bosons

The making of the Standard Model.- CERN’s contribution to accelerators and beams.- The discovery of neutral currents.- The discovery of the W & Z, a personal recollection.- W & Z physics at LEP.- Physics at the LHC.- Challenges of the LHC: the accelerator challenge.- Challenges of the LHC: the detector challenge.- Challenges of the LHC: the computing challenge.- Particle detectors and society.- The future for CERN.- Panel discussion on the future of particle physics chaired by Carlo Rubbia.- Additional contributions by Sheldon Lee Glashow, Donald H. Perkins, and Antonino Pullia.- List of authors.- List of participants.

The discoveries of neutral currents and of the W and Z bosons marked a watershed in the history of CERN. They established the validity of the electroweak theory and convinced physicists of the importance of renormalizable non-Abelian gauge theories of fundamental interactions. The articles collected in this book have been written by distinguished physicists who contributed in a crucial way to these developments. The book provides a historical account of those discoveries and of the construction and testing of the Standard Model. It also contains a discussion of the future of particle physics and gives an updated status of the LHC and its detectors currently being built at CERN. The book addresses those readers interested in particle physics including the educated public.

In a spectacular meeting CERN celebrated its most important findings. The articles written on that occasion address not only the past but also the future of particle physics