By Stephan Narison
World Scientific
This book aims to present the history of particle physics, from the introduction of the concept of particles by Greek philosophers, to the discovery of the last tile of the Standard Model, the Higgs boson particle, which took place at CERN in 2012. Chronologically following the development of this field of science, the author gives an overview of the most important notions and theories of particle physics.
The text is divided into seven sections. The first part provides the basics concepts and a summary of the history of physics, arriving at the modern theory of forces, which are the subject of the second part. It carries on with the Higgs boson discovery and the description of some of the experimental apparatus used to study particles (from the LHC at CERN to cosmic rays and neutrino experiments). The author also provides a brief treatment of general relativity, the Big Bang model and the evolution of the universe, and discusses the future developments of particle physics.
In the main body of the book, the topics are presented in a non-technical fashion, in order to be accessible to non-experts. Nevertheless, a rich appendix provides demonstrations and further details for advanced readers. The text is accompanied by plenty of images, including paintings and photographs of many of the protagonists of particle physics.
