|
Date
|
Milestone
|
Major
Players
|
|
1864
|
Unification of Electricity & Magnetism
|
James Clark Maxwell
|
|
1898
|
Discovery of the electron
|
J.J. Thompson
|
|
1911
|
Discovery of the proton
|
Ernest Rutherford
|
|
1932
|
Discovery of the neutron
|
James Chadwick
|
|
1930s/1940s
|
Development of Quantum Electrodynamics
(QED) suggesting the electromagnetic "field"
is mediated by photons.
|
Richard Feynman
Sin'ichiro Tomonga
Julian Schwinger
|
|
1954
|
Initial development of Gauge Theories
(aka Yang-Mills Theories)
|
Chen Ning Yang
Robert Mills
|
|
1964
|
Suggestion that Quarks were the basic building
blocks of
- Mesons: quark+antiquark pair
- Baryons: combination of three quarks
|
Murray Gell-Mann
George Zweig
|
|
1967/8
|
Unification of electromagnetic and weak
interactions; leading to the theory
of electroweak interactions
(making use of Gauge Theory).
Mediators of the interactions are gauge bosons:
- electromagnetic: photons
- weak: (then) hypothetical particles
|
Steven Weinberg
Abdus Salam
|
|
1973
|
Application of Gauge Theory to the
strong interaction resulting in
Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD),
a explanation of
strong interactions between
quarks in a nucleon. QCD
introduced the new property "color"
to quarks (only 3 were known at the time) &
suggested
only "colorless" systems can exist in isolation.
|
David Gross
Frank Wilczek
David Politzer
|
|
1973
|
Discovery of the J/psi meson
and hence fourth quark.
(J/psi
identified as a charmed quark+antiquark
pairing).
|
Samuel Ting
Burton Richter
|
|
1975
|
Discovery of the tauon
(ie. 3rd lepton family)
|
Martin Perl
|
|
1977
|
Discovery of the upsilon
meson
and hence fifth quark.
(upsilon
identified as a bottom quark+antiquark
pairing).
|
Leon Lederman
|
|
1983
|
Discovery of the Intermediate Vector Bosons
(W-, W+, Z0)
|
Carlo Rubbia
(& large team from
CERN)
|
|
1994
|
Discovery of the top quark
via decay products from
proton/anti-proton collisions.
|
CDF Collaboration
D0 Collaboration
|
|
2000
|
Discovery of the tau-neutrino
at Fermilab
[More...]
|
DONUT Collaboration
|
|
2006+
|
Scheduled start of observations of the
Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
at CERN
(sharing the 27 km LEP tunnels), probing energies
>7TeV.
|
|