The Supersymmetric World

Book excerpt: The story of the discovery of supersymmetry is a fascinating one, unlike that of any other major development 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 eyewitnesses 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.