History of electroweak symmetry breaking

Abstract

In this talk, I recall the history of the development of the unified electroweak theory, incorporating the symmetry-breaking Higgs mechanism, as I saw it from my standpoint as a member of Abdus Salam's group at Imperial College. I start by describing the state of physics in the years after the Second World War, explain how the goal of a unified gauge theory of weak and electromagnetic interactions emerged, the obstacles encountered, in particular the Goldstone theorem, and how they were overcome, followed by a brief account of more recent history, culminating in the historic discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.

Comments: 10 pages. Text of an invited talk at DICE2014, Castiglioncello, September 2014 and also at DISCRETE2014, King's College London, December 2014