Supersymmetric World, The: The Beginnings Of The Theory

The story of the discovery of supersymmetry is a fascinating one, unlike that of any other major de-velopment in the history of science. This engaging book presents a view of the process, mainly in the words of people who participated. It combines anecdotal descriptions and personal reminiscences with more technical accounts of the trailblazers, covering the birth of the theory and its first years — the origin of the idea, four-dimensional field theory realization, and supergravity. The eyewit-nesses convey to us the drama of one of the deepest discoveries in theoretical physics in the 20th century. This book will be equally interesting and useful to young researchers in high energy physics and to mature scholars — physicists and historians of science.The First Edition of this book was released in 2000, just before the symposium 'Thirty Years of Su-persymmetry' was held at the William I. Fine Theoretical Physics Institute (FTPI) of the University of Minnesota. Remarkably, it was at this event that many of the early pioneers of the field met face-to-face for the first time. Since then 23 years have elapsed and significant changes happened in su-persymmetry (SUSY), prompting this second edition.