For scientific, technological and organizational reasons, the end of World War II (in 1945) saw a rapid acceleration in the tempo of discovery and understanding in nuclear physics, cosmic rays and quantum field theory, which together triggered the birth of modern particle physics. The first fifteen years (1945-60) following the war's end — the “Startup Period” in modern particle physics -witnessed a series of major experimental and theoretical developments that began to define the conceptual contours (non-Abelian internal symmetries, Yang-Mills fields,...