History of Particle Physics

by Dr Leonardo Gariboldi (Universitá degli studio di Milano (UNIMI))

Monday 12 May 2025, 11:00 → 12:00 Europe/Zurich

BSP 626 / Zoom

The history of elementary particle physics spans from late nineteenth-century optics to the creation of the Standard Model and its experimental confirmations, passing through its identification as an autonomous discipline with respect to nuclear physics in the mid-twentieth century. During this period, several theoretical and experimental topics have been closely intertwined, which have had to deal with both the search for experimental confirmations of theoretical predictions (e.g., the existence of pions, neutrinos, quarks, and finally the Higgs boson), and the theoretical framework of unexpected experimental discoveries (e.g., muons, and more generally the so-called "particle zoo"). Elementary particle physics has also contributed, in its historical development, to influence some of the main philosophical themes - such as observability in the debate between realism and instrumentalism and the nomological ontology of particles versus the classical ontology of matter.