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. In
this talk I will present very briefly the significance of these anniversaries[1]. CERN’s
founding fathers were among Europe’s leading scientists. CERN became the most
successful International Institution. Scientists built the Scientific European Union
long before politicians thought of the Economic European Union. If the Scientific
Institution appears to be more solid than the Economic one, it is because its foundations
are made with ideas. Regarding the second anniversary, I want to argue that J/Ψ
was not just a new resonance; we knew already a large number of them. It was not
even only the first indirect evidence for the existence of a new quark flavor. It was
all that, but it was also much more. It was the final proof which convinced the large
majority of our community that we were witnessing a radical change of paradigm
in our understanding of microscopic physics. From phenomenological models and
specific theories, each one applied to a restricted set of experimental data, we had to
think in terms of a fundamental theory of universal validity. From many models to
the STANDARD THEORY of particle physics. For most of us this transition was a
revelation, for some others it was a painful experience. It is appropriate to combine it
with CERN’s anniversary because the experimental verification of the Standard Model
started at CERN with the neutral currents and was completed also at CERN with the
BEH scalar boson. It is this story that I will attempt to narrate in this note, although I
do not consider myself to be an unbiased observer.