Waiting for the W and the Higgs

Abstract

The search for the left-handed $W^{\pm }$ bosons, the proposed quanta of the weak interaction, and the Higgs boson, which spontaneously breaks the symmetry of unification of electromagnetic and weak interactions, has driven elementary-particle physics research from the time that I entered college to the present and has led to many unexpected and exciting discoveries which revolutionized our view of subnuclear physics over that period. In this article I describe how these searches and discoveries have intertwined with my own career.

Comments: 23 pages 12 figures, accepted for publication in The European Physical Journal H