Raoul Gatto and Bruno Touschek’s joint legacy in the rise of electron–positron physics

Abstract Raoul Gatto and Bruno Touschek’s collaboration in the establishment of electron–positron colliders as a fundamental discovery tool in particle physics will be illustrated. In particular, we will tell the little-known story of how Gatto and Touschek’s pioneering visions combined to provide the theoretical foundation for AdA, the first matter–antimatter collider, and how their friendship with Wolfgang Pauli and Gerhard Lüders was crucial to their understanding of the CPT theorem, the basis for AdA’s success. We will see how these two exceptional scientists shaped physics between Rome and Frascati, from the proposal to build AdA and soon after the larger machine ADONE in 1961, to the discovery of the $$J/\Psi $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>J</mml:mi> <mml:mo>/</mml:mo> <mml:mi>Ψ</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> particle in 1974. We will also highlight Gatto and Touschek’s contribution in mentoring an extraordinary cohort of students and collaborators whose work contributed to the renaissance of Italian theoretical physics after the Second World War and to the establishment of the Standard Model of particle physics.