The Rise of Gauge Theories: From Many Models to One 2 Theory

By a worth noting coincidence, the year 2024 marks two anniversaries:The 70th anniversary of CERN and the 50th anniversary of the J/Ψ discovery. Inthis talk I will present very briefly the significance of these anniversaries[1]. CERN’sfounding fathers were among Europe’s leading scientists. CERN became the mostsuccessful International Institution. Scientists built the Scientific European Unionlong before politicians thought of the Economic European Union. If the ScientificInstitution appears to be more solid than the Economic one, it is because its foundationsare made with ideas. Regarding the second anniversary, I want to argue that J/Ψwas not just a new resonance; we knew already a large number of them. It was noteven only the first indirect evidence for the existence of a new quark flavor. It wasall that, but it was also much more. It was the final proof which convinced the largemajority of our community that we were witnessing a radical change of paradigmin our understanding of microscopic physics. From phenomenological models andspecific theories, each one applied to a restricted set of experimental data, we had tothink in terms of a fundamental theory of universal validity. From many models tothe STANDARD THEORY of particle physics. For most of us this transition was arevelation, for some others it was a painful experience. It is appropriate to combine itwith CERN’s anniversary because the experimental verification of the Standard Modelstarted at CERN with the neutral currents and was completed also at CERN with theBEH scalar boson. It is this story that I will attempt to narrate in this note, although Ido not consider myself to be an unbiased observer.