Gauge Theories In The Twentieth Century - Tapa dura

"J C Taylor recently edited a collection of original articles on gauge theory, starting with a few pages from Maxwell's 'Treatise'. The collection is well chosen, and is introduced by an instructive commentary. I find it especially useful since it included translations into English of several articles originally in German." C N Yang SUNY, Stony Brook "This is a fascinating and valuable collection, especially the earlier papers, some of which are not now well known. John Taylor's introductory commentary provides a clear and concise explanation of the context and significance of the papers." Tom Kibble Imperial College, London

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 in the 1950s; vacuum symmetry-breaking in the 1960s; asymptotic freedom in the 1970s. A short introduction explains the significance of the papers, and the connections between them.