Description

From the recent discovery of the "top quark" to the search for the Higgs particle, the frontiers of particle physics beckon the imagination. Exploring in detail the full history of particle physics, Yuval Ne'eman and Yoram Kirsh explain in an engaging, nonmathematical style the principles of modern theories such as quantum mechanics and Einstein's relativity, and they brilliantly succeed in conveying to the reader the excitement that accompanied the original discoveries. The book is spiced with amusing stories on how great discoveries were made, and Ne'eman, who took an active role in some of the historical advances in particle physics, gives his personal point of view. New to this edition are sections on the discovery of the top quark; the rise and fall of the supercollider project; the detection of the Zo particle in e+e- colliders; and the use of the width of the Zo to determine the number of "generations" of quarks and leptons. The Particle Hunters will interest anyone who wants to keep pace with the progress of human knowledge. Yuval Ne'eman discovered the basic symmetry of the subatomic particles of matter, leading him to their classification, to the prediction of new particles, and to his identification (in 1962) of a new layer in the structure of matter ("quarks"). Yoram Kirsh was awarded the Aharon Katzir Prize for popular science writing in 1975.