This is an excellent introduction, at an advanced undergraduate level, to the physics of elementary particles and their mutual interactions. Unlike many books in this subject, it starts from a historical and experimental perspective to illustrate how the present theoretical framework, the Standard Model, came about through a long and fascinating bottom-up process. The book will play an important role in inspiring undergraduate students to undertake graduate studies, or perhaps a career, in theoretical (or experimental) high energy physics.
John Iliopoulos is a Director of Research Emeritus at the 'Ecole Normale Sup'erieure in Paris. He has taught on many introductory courses in Theoretical Physics, including Quantum Field Theory and the Theory of Elementary Particles, at the 'Ecole Normale Sup'erieure and the 'Ecole Polytechnique as well as in various Schools and Universities. In 1970, in collaboration with Sheldon Glashow and Luciano Maiani, he predicted the existence of the charm quark and proposed the GIM mechanism, an important step in the construction of the Standard Model. He also contributed to the development of supersymmetry, with Bruno Zumino and Pierre Fayet. He has received many awards, including the Ricard Prize of the French Physical Society, the Sakurai Prize of the American Physical Society, the High Energy Physics Prize of the European Physical Society and the Dirac Medal.
Following his PhD at Harvard University, Theodore Tomaras worked as research associate at CalTech and junior faculty at Rockefeller University, before joining the University of Crete, Greece, where he is now Professor of Physics Emeritus. He has taught many undergraduate and postgraduate courses, on elementary particle physics, quantum field theory, and gravitation and cosmology. He has contributed to the study of magnetic monopoles in GUT models, to the physics beyond the Standard Model, to the study of solitons in High Energy and Condensed Matter Physics, and to astroparticle physics. He has served as Head of the Department of Physics and of the Institute of Theoretical and Computational Physics of the University of Crete for several years, and was recently honoured with the 'S. Pihorides Award for Exceptional University Teaching'.