Gauge Theories in the Twentieth Century

By the end of the 1970s, it was clear that all the known forces of nature (including, in a sense, gravity) were examples of gauge theories , characterized by invariance under symmetry transformations chosen independently at each position and each time. These ideas culminated with the finding of the W and Z gauge bosons (and perhaps also the Higgs boson). This important book brings together the key papers in the history of gauge theories, including the discoveries of: the role of gauge transformations in the quantum theory of electrically charged particles in the 1920s; nonabelian gauge groups