The Unification of Electromagnetism with the Weak Force

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The year 1983 marked the end of a particularly noteworthy decade in the development of elementaryparticle physics. Between 1973 and 1983 there were three accomplishments of special, perhaps historic, importance: The theoretical and experimental unification of the forces that govern all of the phenomena of both electromagnetism and the weak interactions. The recognition that the strongly interacting particles (nucleons, mesons and other hadrons) are in fact made of still smaller entities, now known as quarks, and the development of a tentative theory of the force between the quarks. The identification of three almost identical (except for mass) families of elementary “particles,” each family consisting of two quarks, one charged lepton (the electron, the muon or the tau) and a neutrino. ©1989 American Institute of Physics